If you just want to be told today's puzzle, you can jump to the end of this article for October 4's Connections solution. But if you'd rather solve it yourself, keep reading for s

Each of the four categories is labeled with a color, which also signifies the difficulty level. Yellow is the easiest category, followed by green, blue and purple. The puzzles are rarely straightforward, using homophones and wordplay, among other techniques, to keep players challenged.

The NYT Mini is a quick and dirty version of the newspaper's larger and long-running crossword. Most days, there are between three and five clues in each direction on a five by five grid, but the puzzles are sometimes larger, especially on Saturdays.