Today's Connections has four hidden groups of four. Start with a gentle nudge and only open more if you need it.
Hint 1: One word from each group
Each of these words belongs to a different group.
- Yellow (easiest): BLINK
- Green: CARMINE
- Blue: HOT WHEELS
- Purple (hardest): AVERAGE
Hint 2: Yellow (easiest) group theme
The yellow group is Two Shakes Of A Lamb's Tail.
Hint 3: Green group theme
The green group is Shades Of Red.
Hint 4: Blue group theme
The blue group is Toy Car Brands.
Hint 5: Purple (hardest) group theme
The purple group is Spreadsheet Functions.
Show all four answers
Two Shakes Of A Lamb's Tail
BLINK, FLASH, HEARTBEAT, TRICE
Shades Of Red
CARMINE, CINNABAR, MAROON, VERMILLION
Toy Car Brands
HOT WHEELS, MATCHBOX, MICRO MACHINES, TONKA
Spreadsheet Functions
AVERAGE, COUNT, MAX, SUM
About this puzzle
- Edited by Wyna Liu
- Groups are listed from easiest (yellow) to hardest (purple).
Connections deep dive
More about today's puzzle. Everything in this section can include the answer.
Why each word belongs in its group, with a short dictionary meaning where one exists.
Yellow (easiest): Two Shakes Of A Lamb's Tail
- BLINK: (intransitive) To close and reopen both eyes quickly.
- FLASH: (transitive) To cause to shine briefly or intermittently.
- HEARTBEAT: The rhythm at which a heart pulsates, a cardiac indicator.
- TRICE: Now only in the phrase in a trice: a very short time; the blink of an eye, an instant, a moment.
Green: Shades Of Red
- CARMINE: A purplish-red colour, resembling that pigment.
- CINNABAR: A deep red mineral, mercuric sulfide, HgS; the principal ore of mercury; such ore used as the pigment vermilion.
- MAROON: A rich dark red, somewhat brownish, color.
- VERMILLION: A city, the county seat of Clay County, South Dakota, United States.
Blue: Toy Car Brands
- HOT WHEELS: (informal) A scale model car created by Hot Wheels.
- MATCHBOX: A small cardboard box in which matches are kept.
- MICRO MACHINES: a line of toys originally made by Galoob (now part of Hasbro) from 1987 and throughout the 1990s.
- TONKA: A flavoring or fragrance used in foodstuffs and derived from the tonka bean.
Purple (hardest): Spreadsheet Functions
- AVERAGE: (statistics) Any measure of central tendency, especially any mean, the median, or the mode.
- COUNT: (intransitive) To recite numbers in sequence.
- MAX: (informal) Maximum; maximal.
- SUM: A quantity obtained by addition or aggregation.
Play today's Connections at The New York Times
More hints for September 3, 2026
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