Now you’re here you’re nothing more than a lightning-fast scroll away from winning today’s NYT Connections game. Keep going and you’ll come across our hints for today’s game, designed to help without completely giving everything away. And if you’d like everything given away? You’ve got it. A full set of answers for the September 17 (#98) are ready and waiting.

Make sure you keep a cool head when playing today’s Connections, rather than falling into a panicked state when “One away…” turns up again like I did. A good shuffle of my remaining words turned out to be just the thing I needed to win, helping me sift the one answer I needed from the pack.

NYT Connections hint today: Sunday, September 17

The shuffle feature in NYT’s Connections can be a real game saver—or a complete failure, depending on the day and the words in question. That’s where we come in. There’s a set of helpful hints for the September 16 (#97) puzzle ready if you need them, as well as every answer for today’s game if you’d like to skip to the best bit in a few clicks. Hey, whatever works for you is fine by us.

I had a pretty good start to my Connections weekend, clearing half of today’s board without too much trouble. The other half though? I’d rather not talk about it. Wow, that was far too close for comfort.

NYT Connections hint today: Saturday, September 16

I’ve only played an hour or so of Frictional’s horror sequel Amnesia: The Bunker, partly because 2023 is stacked with huge games, but also because I find it incredibly intense. Its ingenious combination of, player-driven objectives, self-induced time pressure and a big, nasty something that stalks you dynamically through its First World War bunker setting, makes for a dreadful experience in the truest sense of the word. It’s so unrelenting that I struggle to muster the courage to leave the game’s central safe room.

Fortunately, Frictional’s planned Hallowe’en update to the game has a solution. Of sorts. As reported by RPS, The Bunker is soon to receive a new difficulty mode called Shellshocked, introducing an array of changes designed to make the experience even more horrible. Foremost among these is how it removes the obstacles that make your safe room safe, which on the plus side means you no longer have to worry about leaving it.

Chip designer Arm Holdings is going public for the second time in almost thirty years, this time with a market value of $54.5 billion. The company listed 95.5 million shares under “ARM” on Nasdaq, the largest IPO since the electric truck maker Rivian went public in 2021 for over $66 billion. 

The current share price is $51, giving Arm a market capitalization of roughly $54.5 billion. There was early speculation that the IPO value would be as high as $70 billion as big tech companies like Amazon, Nvidia, and Intel planned to spend billions of dollars on the chip designer once it went public. 

Long gone are the days we got only a single farm sim per season. There are more every month now and the latest crop has brought in the excessively cute and magical Fae Farm. I was expecting this one to be too sweet even for my taste but Fae Farm makes such a great first impression with its mercantile island and streamlined farm sim systems that I forgot to put my controller down.

Fae Farm begins as the farm sim bylaws demand:

• There is an unkempt property in a remote location and it is mine now.
• The first thing I’m instructed to do is plant turnips. Why is it always turnips or parsnips? I don’t think I know a single person who’s ever eaten a turnip on purpose.
• I meet the locals who teach me to fish, catch bugs, and care for animals.
• I get swept off to collect copper and bash baddies in the local mines.
• I harvest my nine turnips and then immediately invest in any other crop available (cauliflower).

It takes place on an island beset by disasters like magical whirlpools, giant thorn hedges, and belligerent knick-knacks (“jumbles”) hidden in its mines. I’ve arrived to farm, fish, and forage, but I suppose I can help with the supernatural issues while I’m here. Its stone-cobbled streets and stacked terraces of shops are exactly the kind of Wind Waker nostalgia-inducing setting I’m a sucker for, so my initial aversion to its smooth and overly-cute characters didn’t last long. I caught my first Spring Peeper, these adorable wild purple frogs, and bought my first hen-like Chickoo, and whatever reservations I had about the visual direction evaporated.

Fae Farm held my hand through all of those introductions, chaining together quests given by townsfolk advising me to go meet the next person who would teach me one of these collection skills, enticing me with new activities for multiple hours. Now that we’re so spoiled for choices on farm sims, the opening 30 minutes have become make-or-break for the Stardew-descended family of farm sims. Less tactful ones drag me through lengthy dialogue intro sequences and leave me bored during my first days without enough to do.

Part of how Fae Farm nails its intro is that it’s managed to remove almost all the tiny moments of friction that I’ve come to accept as normal in farm sims. My gathering tools are all completely contextual instead of sitting on an inventory hotbar I need to manage. If I’m standing beside a rock, Left Click will use my pickaxe but if I’m beside a tree it’s my chopping axe. Standing in my field? Clicking will either water a dry space or collect a grown crop.

Fae Farm removes small obstacles from my life in other ways too. The world is full of purple mushrooms I can bounce off of to reach higher areas, all placed in locations that feel heavily playtested as preferred player shortcuts. I always bounce up a mushroom to my homestead lot instead of walking up the small ramp nearby. I can also swim, meaning I’m constantly hopping, diving, and running all over the island in whatever way is most convenient for me. Townsfolk can be tracked on my map so a little indicator on my screen leads me to them. Oh, and bedtime is midnight sharp, though I’m not penalized for not making it home in time.

I recently really enjoyed Roots of Pacha for the way it so accurately followed the path that Stardew Valley has charted. Fae Farm feels like it’s studied the cozy farm sim landscape just as effectively, but learned a different lesson. It reminds me of the concept of “desire paths”. These are places where more efficient footpaths emerge between designed walkways. Fae Farm feels like it’s identified all the desire paths we’ve worn into cozy farm sims and decided to make each of them official.