TheConnectionspuzzles for today are more straightforward than you might expect, making them easy to fall for if you overthink anything. As someone who struggles with many of these puzzles, I found this one to be refreshingly simple compared to others that have come before. While this may seem like today’s puzzle isn’t as challenging, it is still tricky to solve without knowing the context of specific words.
Thankfully, today’s puzzle doesn’t feature a ton of words with multiple meanings, albeit with a few exceptions. Like always, youhave four chances to make a mistakewhen pairing words together before losing, so you still have to be careful with your choices. Similar to thebest Letter Boxed strategies, finding some rare similarities between phrases will make the rest of the puzzle much easier to figure out.
Today’s Connections Category Hints
April 17 #676
I was able to solve today’s puzzle by recognizing very common relations between different words, especially the ones that normally work together. If you had to create a theme for today’s puzzle, it would bea night at the baseball diamond, as all of its topics relate to the sport of baseball in some way. This is likely because the MLB season for 2025 starts this week, with opening games for multiple teams throughout the week.
With this central theme in mind, here are some other clues that can help you narrow down the categories for each part of the puzzle:
If you want to go all out with some of your clue-searching,you should look at the category namesto get some extra help. There are also spoilers for each category if you find yourself needing to solve a single category to finish up.
TORSO
TRUNK
This part of the puzzle tripped me up slightly, as I assumed SIX-PACK was a word you would associate with TORSO or CORE. While this did lead to my first mistake, I quickly realized that TRUNK and MIDRIFF alsodescribed specific areas of your body from your chest to the waist. By repairing those two groups of two words together without the mistaken term, this part of the puzzle wasn’t too difficult.
SAUCE
TOPPINGS
Admittedly, I was hungry when I started this puzzle, so I immediately sawCRUST and CHEESE as part of the pieces that make a great pizza. After that, SAUCE was a natural addition to this group of words, as well as TOPPINGS. While I managed to solve this puzzle very fast, I was even hungrier afterward, so I don’t know whether my intuition was necessarily a success.
GROWLER
SIX-PACK
Anyone who has been to a party may be able to tell you about a beer run that was needed to keep things going. In my experience, I’ve been asked to pick up a quick CASE of cheap beer for my friends, or a larger FORTY or GROWLER for a bigger event. However, while these terms may seem obvious together,SIX-PACK could relate to well-toned abs, so don’t get it confusedwith other terms like TORSO or CORE in this puzzle.
TROUT
YOUNG
This section of the puzzle was the most difficult part for me, as I had to separate these terms from all the others. The ease of the other categories made some of these terms stand out, especially YOUNG and BONDS. After dismissing TROUT as a potential pair for another word, I came to realize thatBONDS was meant to be Barry Bonds, an infamous baseball player. With a quick recognition of Micky MANTLE, Mike TROUT, and Jacob YOUNG, the solution was clear to see.
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