Looking for answers to today's Connections? The Connections Companion has a difficulty rating of 3.3 out of 5.

We update our Connections hints and tips daily. And if the hints aren't enough, you can see all four answers along with the category title and related words. In addition, for those of you reading this in a different time zone, I've included a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #493.

There are spoilers for connection 494. Please read only if you want to know the answer to today's connection.

Or see our NYT Connections How to Play Guide for tips on how to solve the puzzle without our help.

While today's wordle solution guide recommends the best wordle starting words as a strategy, the Connections solution depends on identifying the categories that are connected from the 16 words. The difficulty of each category is represented by a color, with yellow being the easiest grouping and purple the most difficult. Hints are helpful as the answer is displayed after four wrong guesses.

If you need a hint to solve the groupings, here are each theme in order of difficulty:

If you read these hints, you should at least find the answer to today's connection. If not, please continue reading for larger hints. Also, if you only want to know the answer, scroll down further.

A bigger tip is to sit on the grass, answer the questions, watch the movie, and think about the legal issues.

Now, what is the answer to today's game #494 Connection?

Drum roll please.

I saw “Goodfellas” and immediately started looking for other movies. It took me a while, but I soon found “Swingers”.

I stayed on the field too long and got two strikes in the yellow category. The start was yards, grass, and green. Eventually I switched green and park, but the field stayed the same. 23]

I moved to avoid it and saw that Harvard and Criminal were nearby. This led to Low, which helped us find Lemon and Natural.

This allowed me to see addresses, answers, fields, and handles in the green category. From there I was able to correct mistakes in the yellow category.

Are you reading this late in the day? According to Connections Companion, the difficulty level was 3.5 out of 5.

I read a lot about the college football playoffs and playing college football 25. I was curious about the tournament and immediately looked at the brackets and seeds. The rounds were quickly decided; I had trouble with the Bye rounds, but nothing else seemed to fit, so I went with the green category.

Cheerio and Pebble stuck next, so I was looking for a brand name or partial brand name before I got to Flake and Puff. The others were vague, but Cheerio really stood out.

Today's purple category has the longest group description title I have seen on the Connections grid. The title is nine words long, and only three of those words are four letters or less. Wild.

Anyway, “peace” and “two” caught my attention. That's where I got the scissors. Victory was last because people were temporarily blocked from doing that to signal victory. It remains awful.

Yellow, the word for a future point, eventually became the memorizing fill of the day, later, next soon.