NYT Connections answers today: Saturday, September 26, 2026 (#1203)

Updated: Saturday, September 26, 2026 · Hints reviewed by Omer Liban · New puzzle daily at midnight US Eastern Time (5am UK). · Puzzle editor: Wyna Liu.

All four groups for today's NYT Connections puzzle (#1203) — yellow through purple, each connection explained — behind the single reveal below. Still want the win? Today's tiered Connections hints give it away one careful step at a time instead.

New to Connections? The four answer groups are colour-coded by difficulty: 🟡 yellow is the easiest, then 🟢 green, 🔵 blue, and 🟣 purple — the trickiest, usually built on wordplay. The hints below use those colours.

★ Today's full Connections answers (#1203)

Yellow (easiest) — the connection is “Breath fresheners”. The words: GUM, MINT, MOUTHWASH, SPRAY.
Green (easy) — the connection is “Things done to a dress shirt at the laundry”. The words: FOLD, PRESS, STARCH, WASH.
Blue (tricky) — the connection is “Features of wood”. The words: BURL, GRAIN, KNOTS, RINGS.
Purple (trickiest, usually wordplay) — the connection is “"cool" things, in expressions”. The words: BEANS, CAT, CUCUMBER, CUSTOMER.

Today's puzzle, explained

Today's puzzle had a genuinely clever purple group that worked through "cool" expressions: spilling the beans, cool as a cucumber, cool cat, and cool customer all use these words to mean calm or composed. The real trick was that BEANS, CUCUMBER, and CUSTOMER were all sitting in other potential categories in your head—especially BEANS and CUCUMBER, which could feel like they belong with food or plants. RINGS and KNOTS from the wood features category were probably the most tempting misdirects for the blue group since they're such natural wood characteristics that it's easy to overlook that BURL and GRAIN fit just as well. Once you locked in that the green laundry group was about specific things done to dress shirts (PRESS, STARCH, FOLD, WASH), the puzzle opened up pretty quickly.

Yesterday's Connections answers

★ Yesterday's answers (Sep 25, #1202)

Yellow (easiest) — the connection is “Luxe”. The words: BOUGIE, FANCY, POSH, SWANK.
Green (easy) — the connection is “Parts of a mechanical clock”. The words: ESCAPEMENT, PENDULUM, RATCHET, SPRING.
Blue (tricky) — the connection is “Famous dans”. The words: AYKROYD, LEVY, RATHER, SAVAGE.
Purple (trickiest, usually wordplay) — the connection is “Taxonomic ranks plus a letter”. The words: BORDER, CLASSY, FOAMILY, GENIUS.

Missed it? Yesterday's full hints & answers →

Prefer to earn it? Today's Connections hints → — one answer per group, then the themes, then everything. New puzzle daily at midnight US Eastern Time (5am UK). Bookmark this page for tomorrow's answers.

More of today's puzzles

Every past Connections answer → · How to play Connections (and win more) →