The NYT Connections puzzle today is not too difficult to solve if you’re proud to be an American.

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:

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 #970 is…

What is the answer to Connections today

• Cultural symbols of the U.S.: AMERICAN FLAG, APPLE PIE, BALD EAGLE, BASEBALL

• Collide with: BUMP, BUTT, KNOCK, RAM

• Blue things: BLUE THINGS

• Lees of Hollywood: ANG, BRUCE, CHRISTOPHER, SPIKE

Don’t feel down if you didn’t manage to guess it this time. There will be new Connections for you to stretch your brain with tomorrow, and we’ll be back again to guide you with more helpful hints.

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 44 seconds ago

James Bond is a fictional character who needs no introduction: he is the super-sexy, martini-swilling secret agent who always manages to get the last laugh and the girl, usually in that order. Right now, the franchise is at a creative crossroads as we wait to learn who the next Bond will be and whether his adventures will stay confined to the big screen or spread out to the small screen. Fortunately, you can return to the franchise roots with the click of a button by playing Dr. No (1962) on Netflix today.

The premise of Dr. No is that British superspy James Bond is dispatched to investigate the sudden death of a fellow spy. Along the way, he meets up with a few expected enemies (like rival spies) and a few unexpected allies (like a friend at the CIA) before getting caught up in the titular villain’s plan to disrupt an upcoming space launch. Now, whether that launch will be successful or not and whether the good doctor’s evil organization ends up ruling the world may come down to Bond’s ability to save the day when every deck is stacked impossibly against him.

A Cast That Really Leans In

The cast of Dr. No includes Joseph Wiseman (best known outside of this movie for Buck Rogers in the 25th Century) as the titular supervillain and Ursula Andress (best known outside of this movie for Clash of the Titans) as the first Bond girl. Unsurprisingly, the best performance comes from Sean Connery, who gives his secret agent a roguish charm that helped to make the actor a household name. Make no mistake: James Bond would never have become such an international phenomenon if not for Connery’s legendary performance, one that holds up remarkably well after all these years.

Relative to its budget, Dr. No is one of the most successful films ever made, especially in the action genre. Against a budget of $1.1 million, the film earned $59.5 million, establishing Bond, James Bond, as one of the most marketable IPs in the entire world. The success of this movie ensured it would have many sequels, leading to a Bond franchise that consists (so far) of 25 official movies, with various actors (including Roger Moore, Pierce Brosnan, and Daniel Craig) filling the oversized shoes of Sean Connery once he finally left the franchise that had made him famous.

The Critics Couldn’t Say “No”

Dr. No took over the film world as surely as its titular villain wanted to take over the real world. On Rotten Tomatoes, the movie had a stunning score of 95 percent, with critics commending the film for its uniquely intoxicating blend of action and style. They further praised the movie for delivering such a fully formed cinematic hero in the form of James Bond, someone whose humor and sex appeal are just as much a part of his arsenal as the sexy cars and sleek guns.

If you’re a longtime fan of 007, you might find him largely unrecognizable in this first outing: he’s a meaner, colder secret agent, someone more akin to Daniel Craig or Timothy Dalton’s take on this famous super agent. That doesn’t mean you won’t see some of that trademark Bond charm and plenty of eye candy, thanks to the inaugural Bond girl, Honey Ryder. Plus, the plot is relatively scaled down, but this might very well appeal to someone who has gotten bored by the impossibly high stakes of later Bond outings that feel more like generic Marvel movies rather than grounded, realistic adventures in their own right.

The Most Driven Spy In Hollywood

Dr. No isn’t the best James Bond movie, but it’s arguably the most important because it introduced the world to an entirely new breed of action hero. 007’s influence in future films simply can’t be overstated, and he eventually became one of the most recognizable pop culture figures ever created. Understandably, there’s plenty of joy in returning to Bond’s first outing, which is a relentlessly satisfying romp in its own right that just happens to lay all the groundwork for the sexiest, most stylish franchise to ever grace the silver screen.

Will you agree that Dr. No is a sexy classic that changed Hollywood forever, or is this one spy movie you’d rather leave in the past? The only way to find out is to grab the remote (just watch out for that exploding pen!) and stream it for yourself on Netflix. When it comes to this first cinematic outing of the greatest secret agent the world has ever known, I’m confident you’ll be shaken and stirred.

By Joshua Tyler
| Published 1 hour ago

In a world gone mad, we could all use a little simple, silly, innocent fun. It’s the perfect time for a revival of The Muppet Show, and, on the surface, that’s exactly what Executive Producer Seth Rogen has given us.

His new version of the classic variety series on Disney+ looks, sounds, and feels exactly like the iconic Jim Henson series from the 1970s and 1980s. On that front, it’s a triumph. A perfect production.

Except, there’s one big difference, and it’s this: Jim Henson’s version was the ultimate in wholesome, family-friendly entertainment. Seth Rogen’s version only pretends to be. 

It’s normal for family-targeted shows to work in a couple of edgy jokes that’ll go over the heads of little kids who might be watching with them. That’s part of the fun for parents. However, what would you think if instead of one or two sly adult references in your Pixar movie, there were twenty? Or thirty? And what if all those sly adult references were only about one specific inappropriate thing? At what point would you start thinking… hey, is this Pixar movie trying to tell my kids something?

Because that’s exactly what The Muppet Show is doing. It’s only thirty minutes long, but I counted at least ten references to various kinds of sex in those thirty minutes. Actually, not just references, most of them seemed to specifically revolve around celebrating full-on, willful cheating.

There’s a joke where Sabrina Carpenter tells Kermit she likes kink. There’s an entire sketch that totally revolves around Piggy cheating on her lover. After that, it’s back to Sabrina Carpenter so she can brag to Kermit about banging a married man. 

Then there’s a segment with Maya Rudolph where she seems to be sort of getting frisky with a grumpy Muppet in the audience. Oh, and two of the musical numbers are popular songs about sex. Though the second one is sung entirely by rats, and it’s hilarious. The third song has Piggy replace Kermit as the object of Sabrina Carpenter’s desire. 

There are more, and to Seth Rogen’s credit, I guess, they’re all structured in a way that little kids probably won’t realize what’s going on. But it’s a significant portion of the show, which is a very weird thing to do for your debut episode of The Muppet Show. It’s not the jokes themselves so much as the volume of them, crammed into a short thirty minutes of otherwise perfect Muppet silliness.

I get and support the desire to work in some sly adult jokes for the parents; it’s a family show, not a kids’ show. But why are they all sex references? And why are there so many of them?

The best parts of The Muppet Show are when it does fully get away from sex and cheating and engages in sillier gags. My favorite was a setup early in the episode where a Beaker mishap leads to eyeballs bouncing all over the Muppet theater. That, in turn, snowballs into Maya Rudolph being pronounced dead, and ultimately ends in a classic saxophone gag buried in the end credits.

It looks and feels so much like The Muppet Show that I worry parents won’t realize their kids are being fed a steady stream of sexualization, or whatever it is. In an era when people are already wary of Disney’s tendency towards showing inappropriate content to minors, filling the debut episode of your attempt to revitalize the greatest family television show of all time with adult references is, to say the least, a very odd decision.

All the elements are there for The Muppet Show to be the right thing at the right time, if Seth Rogen can just get control of his libido. Maybe they’ll fix it in the second episode. Who am I kidding? This is a Disney show. Of course they won’t.

THE MUPPET SHOW REVIEW SCORE