NYT Connections Answers & Hints: September 5, 2025

Today’s Connections Quick Summary

Yellow Group (Easiest): Piquancy
KICK, PUNCH, ZEST, ZING

Green Group: Available
FREE, SINGLE, SOLO, STAG

Blue Group: Male Animals
BILLY, BUCK, JACK, RAM

Purple Group (Hardest): Chinese Dynasties
HAN, MING, SONG, TANG

Strategic Hints by Difficulty

Yellow Group Hint: “Spicy”

These words all describe flavor intensity or liveliness. Think about words that add energy or sharpness to food or situations.

Green Group Hint: “Not part of a group or couple”

All these words describe someone or something that’s unattached or available. Think relationship status or availability.

Blue Group Hint: “A mare wouldn’t qualify”

These are all terms for male animals. Each represents the masculine version of different animal species.

Purple Group Hint: “Ancient families”

These words can all precede “dynasty” and refer to Chinese ruling dynasties. Historical knowledge helps here.

Detailed Analysis

The Star Wars Red Herring

Today’s puzzle cleverly included HAN and SOLO in the same grid, leading many solvers to assume a Star Wars connection. However, this was intentionally misleading—HAN belongs with the Chinese dynasties while SOLO fits with the “available” theme.

Difficulty Assessment

The Connections Companion rates this puzzle at 2.8 out of 5 difficulty. The challenge comes primarily from:

• The Star Wars misdirection with HAN and SOLO
• Purple group requiring historical knowledge of Chinese dynasties
• Multiple potential meanings for words like STAG and JACK

Solving Strategy Tips

Start with Yellow: Words like KICK, PUNCH, ZEST, and ZING clearly relate to spiciness or energy.

Recognize the Misdirection: Don’t fall for HAN SOLO as a pair—they belong in different categories.

Think Male Animals: BILLY (goat), BUCK (deer), JACK (donkey), and RAM (sheep) are all masculine animal terms.

Historical Knowledge Helps: The purple group requires familiarity with Chinese history—HAN, MING, SONG, and TANG were all major dynasties.

Group Explanations

Piquancy (Yellow)
All four words describe sharpness, energy, or liveliness—whether in food flavoring or personality.

Available (Green)
These words all indicate being unattached or accessible. STAG specifically refers to attending events without a partner.

Male Animals (Blue)
Each represents the masculine term for different animals: billy goat, buck deer, jackass/donkey, and ram sheep.

Chinese Dynasties (Purple)
Historical ruling families of China spanning over 2,000 years of history.

About NYT Connections

Connections challenges players to group 16 words into four categories of four words each. Each category has a different difficulty level indicated by color coding, with yellow being easiest and purple most challenging.

Release Schedule: New puzzles appear daily at midnight in your local time zone.