The NYT Connections puzzle today is not too difficult if you’re a theater kid.

Connections is the one of the most popular New York Times word games that’s captured the public’s attention. The game is all about finding the “common threads between words.” And just like Wordle, Connections resets after midnight and each new set of words gets trickier and trickier—so we’ve served up some hints and tips to get you over the hurdle.

If you just want to be told today’s puzzle, you can jump to the end of this article for today’s Connections solution. But if you’d rather solve it yourself, keep reading for some clues, tips, and strategies to assist you.

What is Connections?

The NYT‘s latest daily word game has become a social media hit. The Times credits associate puzzle editor Wyna Liu with helping to create the new word game and bringing it to the publications’ Games section. Connections can be played on both web browsers and mobile devices and require players to group four words that share something in common.

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Each puzzle features 16 words and each grouping of words is split into four categories. These sets could comprise of anything from book titles, software, country names, etc. Even though multiple words will seem like they fit together, there’s only one correct answer.

If a player gets all four words in a set correct, those words are removed from the board. Guess wrong and it counts as a mistake—players get up to four mistakes until the game ends.

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Players can also rearrange and shuffle the board to make spotting connections easier. Additionally, each group is color-coded with yellow being the easiest, followed by green, blue, and purple. Like Wordle, you can share the results with your friends on social media.

Here’s a hint for today’s Connections categories

Want a hint about the categories without being told the categories? Then give these a try:

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Here are today’s Connections categories

Need a little extra help? Today’s connections fall into the following categories:

Looking for Wordle today? Here’s the answer to today’s Wordle.

Ready for the answers? This is your last chance to turn back and solve today’s puzzle before we reveal the solutions.

Drumroll, please!

The solution to today’s Connections #1136 is…

What is the answer to Connections today

• Kinds of tops: CROP, HALTER, TANK, TUBE

• Software downloads: APP, DRIVER, EXTENSION, PLUGIN

• Elements of a musical: BOOK, LYRICS, MUSIC, ORCHESTRATION

• Tele___: GRAM, KENESIS, PROMPTER, VISION

Are you also playing NYT Strands? Get all the Strands hints you need for today’s puzzle.

If you’re looking for more puzzles, Mashable’s got games now! Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.

Not the day you’re after? Here’s the solution to yesterday’s Connections.

By Chris Snellgrove
| Updated 19 seconds ago

One of the most fascinating things about insanely talented writers is that they are typically overly critical of their greatest works. Sometimes, this is because they lack confidence in themselves and worry that everything (no matter how successful) could always be better. Other times, it’s simply because they were writing under a tight deadline and became convinced they could have done better if they only had more time. This actually happened to some of the greatest writers of Star Trek: The Next Generation when they were working on one of the show’s best episodes: “Yesterday’s Enterprise.”

These days, fans look back on this episode as a defining episode of the series, one that demonstrated how much potential TNG really had. At the time, though, the writers (including future Deep Space Nine showrunner Ira Steven Behr and future Battlestar Galactica showrunner Ronald D. Moore) feared that the episode would be a disaster because they had to work over Thanksgiving and turn a completed script in by the end of the weekend. However, the sheer quality of the episode proved one thing once and for all: if there’s anything these guys can do, it’s work well under pressure!

Star Trek Into Darkness (Literally)

Why did the writers for “Yesterday’s Enterprise” have to work on the episode over Thanksgiving? This had everything to do with the episode’s special guest stars, Denise Crosby and Whoopi Goldberg. Crosby’s character had been killed off back in Season 1, so she was busy with other projects during filming for Season 3. Meanwhile, Goldberg was a big-deal movie star who only appeared on Star Trek because she loved the franchise so much. The episode was originally going to be written after Christmas, but to accommodate both actors’ schedules, the writers had to suddenly have a completed script by the end of Thanksgiving weekend.

According to the reference book The Making of Yesterday’s Enterprise, Ira Steven Behr said that the writers (which included himself, Ronald D. Moore, Hans Beimler, and Richard Manning) were understandably grumpy about having to work over a holiday weekend. In order to get the episode done under the deadline, each writer was given a different portion of the script to handle. For example, Moore was the main guy handling the romance between Tasha Yar and the time-displaced Richard Castillo.

Dropping Everything For Some Very Special Guest Stars 

Despite having a game plan, they feared the episode would suck; according to Star Trek: The Next Generation–The Continuing Mission, Eric Stillwell (who developed the story) claimed, “Most of the writers were not very happy with the script. They thought it was going to be horrible, because they don’t like having to write [something] and make it work in three days.” However, these writers embraced a silver lining: they finally got to write the kind of dark, tension-filled episode that various Trek bigwigs (notably, Gene Roddenberry himself) always rejected. Fortunately, their hard work paid off, and “Yesterday’s Enterprise” became the third highest-watched episode of the entire series.

It’s hard to understate the influence of “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” which became a favorite episode of Denise Crosby, Rick Berman, and episode director David Carson. It won an Emmy and was voted the best episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation on six different occasions. And, for better or for worse, Roberto Orci later said this episode was the primary influence of Star Trek (2009), which kickstarted the Kelvinverse. Ironically enough, though, this insanely successful and influential TNG episode was written by four annoyed writers over three days, all of whom thought it would be completely awful and just wanted to eat some leftover turkey!

By Jonathan Klotz
| Updated 18 minutes ago

The 70s was an odd time for sci-fi movies. On the one hand, the genre had broken free of the generic 50s mad scientist/monster movies and a new wave of filmmakers was experimenting with stories that pushed the envelope. On the other hand, those wild experiments sometimes got a little weird. Case in point 1975’s A Boy and His Dog, which follows Vic and his telepathic dog Blood wandering a post-apocalyptic wasteland as they search for food, and more importantly, women. Streaming for free on Tubi and Amazon Prime, it’s an unlikely inspiration for both Fallout and Mad Max, while a time capsule of what sci-fi was like before Star Wars changed everything.

A Boy And His Dog And His Libido

A Boy and His Dog stars Don Johnson as Vic, and Tim McIntire as the voice of Blood. The two constantly bicker as any two male best friends do. Blood’s ability to sniff out women is of incredible importance to the horny and lonely Vic, who after saving one girl, Quilla June (Susanne Benton)  from mutants and finally getting laid again, decides to follow her to Downunder, a secret society beneath the surface that’s a near utopia compared to the nuclear blasted wasteland.

Unfortunately, Blood remains on the surface and none of the human characters can match his dry wit. It’s there, in the subterranean version of Topeka, that Vic learns he’ll achieve his dream of copulation thanks to a high “stud rating,” except he’ll be “sent to the farm” after impregnating 35 women. Worse, it’s all done through electrodes, and that more than anything is what spurs Vic to escape Topeka. 

A Faithful Adaptation Of A Sci-Fi Legend

It’s a weird plot, but it’s also a rather faithful adaptation of the novella, A Boy and His Dog by the sci-fi icon Harlan Ellison. The biggest change was a few lines of dialogue that make the film more, according to Ellison, misogynistic than his novel ever was. It wasn’t enough to stop the film from becoming an immediate cult classic. It would never, ever be made today. Johnson’s performance, which makes it pretty clear that Vic can be outsmarted by everyone he comes across, goes so far as to start flipping the script. 

The influence A Boy and His Dog had on Fallout is immediately clear. Vic calls Blood “Dogmeat,” Downunder is essentially a Vault-Tec experiment, and the complete breakdown of society’s old order explains why something as mundane as bottle caps became currency in the games. Who knew a black sci-fi comedy about a horny survivor would influence one of the best post-apocalyptic series of all time?

A Boy and His Dog bombed in theaters, but once it became a cult classic, work started on a  sequel. Instead of Vic, it would follow a female survivor named Spike and of course, Blood, the real hero of the series. Nine years after he brought Vic to life, Don Johnson starred in Miami Vice and changed television forever. If you ever wanted to see Sonny Crockett as a horny scavenger, A Boy and His Dog is your chance. 

A Boy and His Dog is streaming for free on Tubi, Amazon Prime Video, Pluto TV, Plex, and YouTube.