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Spoilers: The four Connections #388 groups for Wednesday, July 3, 2024, are ideas, tangible things, kinds of cake, and things you can throw metaphorically. The full word groupings appear below.
July 3 Connections #388 answers
TechRadar’s Marc McLaren reported these four groups and their words for the July 3, 2024 puzzle:
| Color | Category | Words |
|---|---|---|
| Yellow | Develop, as ideas | BRAINSTORM, IDEATE, SPITBALL, WORKSHOP |
| Green | Tangible | CONCRETE, MATERIAL, REAL, SOLID |
| Blue | Kinds of cake | BIRTHDAY, CRUMB, MARBLE, POUND |
| Purple | Things you can throw, in metaphors | CURVEBALL, PARTY, TANTRUM, WRENCH |
The full word bank was BIRTHDAY, MARBLE, WRENCH, CONCRETE, CURVEBALL, WORKSHOP, PARTY, POUND, SPITBALL, MATERIAL, REAL, TANTRUM, SOLID, BRAINSTORM, CRUMB, and IDEATE. TechRadar’s July 3 solution is the source for this puzzle’s groupings.
How the four groups fit
Yellow: develop, as ideas
To develop an idea, you might brainstorm or ideate, spitball possibilities, or workshop them.
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- Unravel a Cold War conspiracy in Vienna Connection, a standalone spy thriller inspired by Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game.
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Green: tangible
Concrete, material, real, and solid can each describe something tangible.
Blue: kinds of cake
BIRTHDAY, CRUMB, MARBLE, and POUND refer to birthday cake, crumb cake, marble cake, and pound cake.
Rank #2
Purple: things you can throw, in metaphors
You can throw a curveball, throw a party, throw a tantrum, or throw a wrench in the works. The phrases make this the figurative group.
How Connections works
The New York Times Help Center describes the game as 16 words that players sort into four groups of four sharing something in common. Yellow is the easiest group and purple the trickiest, but words can appear to fit more than one category, so finding the intended connection is part of the challenge. NYT says editors curate words and categories using the Oxford Dictionary. See the NYT Connections Help Center for the official rules and access details.
Rank #3
- Two teams race to identify their agents from a 5×5 grid, guided by a spymaster who knows each card’s identity
- Spymasters give one-word clues and a number to link multiple cards, encouraging creative thinking
- Teammates guess words matching the clue while avoiding the other team’s agents, bystanders, and the assassin
- Revealing the assassin ends the game instantly, adding high-stakes tension
- Teams may guess up to the clue number plus one, allowing strategic risks or revisiting old clues
How difficult was puzzle #388?
Marc McLaren rated this puzzle “Moderate” and said he got a perfect score. He noted that CRUMB cake was unfamiliar to him, and that he connected MARBLE and POUND to the cake category late. Those are his personal impressions, not a measured difficulty rating or a player success statistic.
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Rank #4
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