NYT Connections hints and answers, Wednesday Apr 9

This guide is for a previous day! Looking for today's? Check out the Connections hint for Sunday 27th April!

Need a hint for today's Connections on Wednesday, 9th April? Your Connections categories for today run the gamut from animal words to shapes, and it would be real skill if you managed to determine all of these groups on your own! (It certainly took me forever.)

For all of you who could use a hint or three, read on. We've listed a selection of tips below that'll help you solve today's Connections with ease.

In this guide:

• How to play Connections
• Connections hint for Wednesday 9th April
• What are today's Connections groups?
• What are today's Connections answers?

Here are the 16 Connections words for today:

How to play Connections

Connections is one of the most popular (and challenging) daily puzzle games published by the New York Times (owners of Wordle). The aim of Connections is to group the 16 words of the day into four groups, where each group of four words has a common theme.

For instance, the words "Hook", "Nana", "Peter", and "Wendy" are all Peter Pan characters. Or to take another example, "Action", "Ballpark", "Go", and "Stick" are all words which commonly come just before the word "Figure".

Your job is to figure out what these themes are that connect the various words together - but be wary, because a lot of the time there are deceptive red herring connections placed purely to throw you off! To win the game, you have to find all four Connections without making 4 mistakes. On your fourth mistake, the game is over and the answer is revealed automatically.

Each of the four groups in each day's Connections puzzle is also assigned a different colour, which represents how easy or difficult the Connection is to find. These colours are: Yellow (Easiest), Green (Easy), Blue (Medium), and Purple (Hardest).

Click here to play today's Connections puzzle!

Connections hint for Wednesday 9th April

Here are your Connections hints for today:

• Yellow: All of these are the same shape.
• Green: Words used to describe hitting something with your fist.
• Blue: Used by three witches.
• Purple: All of these can come after the name of a dog-like orange mammal.
• Extra hint 1: "Sock" does not refer to the foot covering.
• Extra hint 2: Bat and Newt belong in the same group.

If you need a bit more help, tap the spoiler text below to reveal one word belonging to each group:

• Yellow:Ball
• Green:Sock
• Blue:Newt
• Purple:Glove

Spoiler warning! Today's Connections groups are revealed just below!

What are today's Connections groups?

If you need an even bigger clue to figure out today's Connections puzzle, below we'll reveal the four correct Connections groups - the themes which link together each set of four words in the Connections grid.

Here are the Connections groups for today:

• Yellow: Round Three-Dimensional Objects
• Green: Punch
• Blue: Animals In The Witches' Brew In “Macbeth”
• Purple: Fox___

Now that you know the themes for the various different Connections in today's puzzle, see if you can solve it! If not, check below for the full answer.

Spoiler warning! Today's Connections answer lies ahead!

What is today's Connections answer?

Here is the answer to today's Connections puzzle on Wednesday, 9th April:

• Yellow: Round Three-Dimensional Objects (Ball, Globe, Orb, Sphere)
• Green: Punch (Pop, Pound, Slug, Sock)
• Blue: Animals In The Witches' Brew In “Macbeth” (Bat, Dog, Frog, Newt)
• Purple: Fox___ (Hole, Hound, Glove, Trot)

I liked today's challenge, mostly because I think the three witches in Macbeth are cool. That said, the Blue group is certainly a challenge if you aren't up to date with your Shakespeare, and even if you are, it's fair if you don't recall all of the animals that the witches tossed into their brew.

The rest of the categories didn't give me much trouble, though I can see some slip-ups occurring with "Pop" and "Pound" within the Green group. The Purple group isn't too tough this time around, especially if you're familiar with your flowers ("Foxglove") and your 1930s dances ("Foxtrot"). If you've played the Metal Gear series, I'm assuming that you'll have the same association that I do with "Foxhound."

Congratulations if you got today's Connections answer right, with or without the help of our handy hints above! And if you didn't succeed today, don't worry - a new Connections puzzle is released every day at midnight, so you can try again tomorrow, just like with Wordle!