Looking for answers to today's Connections? The Connections Companion has a difficulty rating of 2.3 out of 5.

We update our Connections hints and tips daily. And if the hints aren't enough, see the four answers below, along with the category title and related words. In addition, for those of you reading this in another time zone, I have included a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #502.

There are spoilers for connection 503. Only those who want to know the answer to today's connection should read on.

Alternatively, 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:

These hints should at least give you an idea of how to find the answer to today's connection. If not, please continue reading for larger hints. Also, if you just want the answer, scroll down further.

There is a bigger clue. Consider the tube, take a swing, don't panic, and get out of the group chat.

Now, what's the answer to today's game #503 Connection?

Drum roll please.

I was thinking of babies with rockers, swings, and cradles, so today we start in the blue category. The hammock doesn't fit for a baby, but nothing else did.

A reset brought the chain and chat next to each other and found a message thread and conversation.

I had my eye on cans, rollers, and spools, but was looking for something that would lead to paint or sewing. It took a second for Silo to click on the tube-shaped item.

That left faze, rattle, ruffle, and throw, “fluster”. I don't know why I didn't see the yellow category, but that's what happened.

Have a nice weekend.

Are you reading this late in the day? According to the Connections Companion, this is the Connections solution to game #502, which had a difficulty score of 3.2 out of 5.

I went down the line today, but I didn't mean to.

I saw the tittle and period, but somehow skipped the exclamation point and question mark, grabbing the dot and point instead.

Rave, ball, and hop jumped out at me as a dance. At first I wasn't sure about the formal, but it didn't fit into any of the other categories, so it became the green category.

I am one of those “heathen” androids, so I had no connection to the iPhone. For me, it was just exclamation points, hearts, question marks, and thumbs up emojis. At least I use emojis in Slack for this job.

“Pan” is a great purple category. The purple grouping should be clever; all four are variations on the word “pan. Liked. This one had bad reviews, camera moves, cookware, and satyrs.