Note : Make sure to complete today’s NYT Connections before reading further! We’ll be getting into spoilers for today’s game pretty quickly. If you need some help to complete the grid, you can find my NYT Connections hints and answers column for today via my author page .

Hey there, Connectors! Welcome to my deeper dive into today’s Connections answers. The idea behind this is to help clear things up for anyone who isn’t sure how today’s groups fit together.

If I’ve missed any red herrings or misunderstood something, let me know via email or on Discord . I don’t typically look at X or check the comments here.

I’m going to assume that you’ve already beaten today’s game. We’re going straight into spoiler territory here. So, consider this your one and only warning .

Here are today’s NYT Connections answers explained (and any red herrings I spot) for Wednesday, September 30:

Today’s NYT Connections Answers Explained

Connections – Yellow Group

🟨 securities (BOND, FUTURE, OPTION, STOCK)

These are all things you can invest in with the hope of gaining a positive return. A BOND is a loan taken out by a company or government, but rather than obtaining it from the bank, they get the cash from investors/the public, who are paid interest.

A STOCK represents ownership in the company that issued it. If you buy a share of Apple, for instance, you become one of the company’s stockholders.

FUTURE and OPTION are fairly similar. Both are types of contracts that grant the purchaser the right to buy or sell assets at a set price on a certain date in the future. The investor can sell these contracts before the expiration date.

A holder of a FUTURE contract must buy the underlying assets when it expires, whereas OPTION contract holders can decline to buy the shares. (I’m not a financial advisor, but I wouldn’t suggest to anyone to dabble in OPTIONS. I’ve lost more money than I care to admit on those!)

Connections – Green Group

🟩 things that are shaken (not stirred) (ETCH A SKETCH, MARTINI, SPRAY PAINT, TAMBOURINE)

I’ll get to what the category title and MARTINI refer to in the red herrings section.

An ETCH A SKETCH is a mechanical drawing toy that you can use to create a picture. Shaking the device clears the image:

A can of SPRAY PAINT is shaken before use, and one shakes a TAMBOURINE to create sound.

🟦 gangster movies (BUGSY, CASINO, DONNIE BRASCO, SCARFACE)

BUGSY is a 1991 film starring Warren Beatty as Bugsy Siegel, a real-life mobster:

CASINO is a Martin Scorsese that’s also based on a true story. This one’s about a mobster (Robert De Niro) who takes control of a casino:

DONNIE BRASCO features another stalwart of gangster movies in the shape of Al Pacino:

And would you look at that? Pacino also stars in SCARFACE:

Connections – Purple Group

🟪 starting with month abbreviations (DECENT, NOVELTY, OCTOPUSSY, SEPTUM)

  • DECENT > Dec > December
  • NOVELTY> Nov > November
  • OCTOPUSSY > Oct > October
  • SEPTUM > Sept > September

Connections – Red Herrings

MARTINI begins with Mar, an abbreviation of March. As the green category alluded to, MARTINI is also associated with James BOND, who famously prefers such cocktails to be shaken, not stirred.

The character is associated with CASINOs as well, and Casino Royale i s the title of a Bond film. OCTOPUSSY is the title of another Bond movie.

If you’d like to chat about today’s game of Connections and just about anything else with me and a very lovely group of people, you can do just that in our Discord community . We’d love for you to hang out with us.

I’ll be back with another set of NYT Connections hints and answers tomorrow, as well as another edition of this one, all going well. You’ll be able to find both of those on my Forbes author page when the time comes (following me there helps me out too!). As for the weekend editions of my NYT Connections hints and answers column, I’m currently doing that via my newsletter, Pastimes .