I'm looking for a connection today. Connections answers in Puzzle #9 of the month 517 is easier than yesterday's puzzle, and Connections Companion has rated the difficulty of this puzzle as 2 out of 5.

Every day we update this article with connection tips and tips to help you find all 4 of today's answers. If the hint is not enough, you can find all the 4 answers below, with words that correlate with the title of the category. Additionally, it includes reflections on yesterday's puzzle, #516, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.

Spoilers are ahead for connection #517. Read only if you want to know the answer for today's connection.

Also see How to Play NYT Connect Guide for tips on how to solve puzzles without our help.

Just in case, The Tech Guild of The New York Times is on strike and is asking people not to play games on the NYT gaming app or online. They created a strike edition website that has the same puzzle if you do not want to cross the picket line.

Unlike our guide to Wordle answers today we recommend the best Wordle Start word as your strategy, solving the connection relies on identifying the category to connect between 16 words. The difficulty of each category is represented by color, yellow is the easiest grouping and purple is the most challenging. If you make 4 mistakes in your guess, the tips may help, as the answer will be revealed.

If you need tips for solving grouping, here are the themes for each based on the order of difficulty:

These tips should get at least some of the ways to find the answers connected today. Or scroll further down if you just want to know the answer.

Here's a bigger tip: Brush up on your algebra but get twisted while looking for a little bit and hit the water closet

So what is today's connection answer for game #517.

Drum roll, please.

I was almost caught in the trap of shredded, awkward, twisted, and radical slang. I do not know why I did not take the bait.

Instead, I started the puzzle today when I licked and traced it, shred it and then went back to a small amount of ounces.

The bus and the throne were close to each other and I quickly added a room to the end. It was a quick job to find the powder (room) and the rest (room). All colloquial for the bathroom.

Gnarly and twisted got their time in the sun here by snagging bent and warped for the yellow category.

So algebra rote by exponents, radicals, powers, and roots. Mathematics is not a personal strong suit and I'm not sure if I remember those words being all specific to algebra. So, I'm happy to have it in the end.

Read this later in the time zone. According to Connections Companion, game #516 had a difficulty rating of 2.8 out of 5.

Today I immediately started the puzzle with a group of greens when I saw dill and kosher. The sour was quick to follow and I discussed the spicy but put the sweet instead which got us into pickles.

Sticking to spicy, I had an adult who was suggestive before finding blue to get the blue category.

I saw the yellow category but wanted to knock out the purple first because we chose the cheese, cord, deck and mustard for the "cut.""It's so cute. I was not familiar with the phrase "cut mustard", which refers to whether ala enough "do not cut mustard in a tryout.""Probably won't add it to my dictionary.

The yellow category was nice and simple antics, capers, exploits and stunts for adventure.

Btw, yesterday, while playing around with the archive, I discovered through trial and error that the strike version of the connection has no four errors and no policy like the regular NYTimes. You can obviously go as far as you want and it just tallies up how many false guesses you took. If you do strike too many strikes, but make for a relaxing game to ponder over, take away some of the tension.