Looking for the most recent Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Today’s Connections puzzle has a fun yellow category, if you like this particular kind of hangout. Read on for clues and today’s Connections answers.

The Times now has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric score and to have the program analyze your answers. Players who are registered with the Times Games section can now nerd out by following their progress, including number of puzzles completed, win rate, number of times they nabbed a perfect score and their win streak.

Read more: Hints, Tips and Strategies to Help You Win at NYT Connections Every Time

Hints for today’s Connections groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group, to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Cheers!

Green group hint: Olympic competition.

Blue group hint: It’s in the bag.

Purple group hint: Not fun, but…

Answers for today’s Connections groups

Yellow group: Local watering hole.

Green group: Compete in a modern pentathlon.

Blue group: Ensure, as a victory.

Purple group: ____ fund.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is local watering hole. The four answers are dive, establishment, haunt and joint.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is compete in a modern pentathlon. The four answers are fence, ride, shoot and swim.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is ensure, as a victory. The four answers are cinch, guarantee, ice and lock.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is ____ fund. The four answers are hedge, mutual, slush and trust.

Yes, even the PlayStation 5 isn’t new anymore. That console came out in 2020, which means it’s currently in the second half of its life cycle. Since then, new consoles like the Nintendo Switch 2 have hit the market. If you’re tiring of your PS5, you have more options than storing it in the top of your closet where it will just collect dust. You could give the console away or sell it for some extra cash.

Regardless of whether you’re ready to give yours away to the recent grad in your life or if you’re looking to sell your device for some extra cash, you have plenty of options. There’s one important thing you need to do to your console before you get rid of it: reset the system and wipe your personal data.

Factory resetting is a crucial step that you should take whenever you’re selling or giving away a piece of technology. Your old PlayStation is no exception. While you might not be storing the same kind of information on your PS4 or PS5 that you would on your laptop or smartphone, this step can save you a great deal of stress by taking care of any leftover information.

Read on for everything you need to know about resetting your PS5 or your PS4. For more, here’s what to know about buying a used iPhone and our picks for the best place to sell your electronics. 

Resetting the PlayStation 5

You have a few options when it comes to factory resetting your PS5. To access these options, navigate to the Home Screen and then select Settings > System > System Software > Reset Options. 

After selecting Reset Options you will be presented with three options: Clear Learning Dictionary, Restore Default Settings and Reset Your Console. 

• Clear Learning Dictionary will clear the history of all the terms that you have typed on your PS5. 
• Restore Default Settings will restore all of the settings on your PS5 to their default setting, but leave your data intact. 
• Reset Your Console will restore all of the settings to their default options and erase all of the data that has been saved to your PS5. 

If you are looking to factory reset your console before selling it or giving it away, select Reset Your Console to fully wipe all of your data from the device and factory reset the console. 

Resetting the PlayStation 4

The process for factory resetting your console is a bit different for the PS4. First, you will need to navigate to Settings > Initialization. Much like the process for factory resetting the Playstation 5, you will be presented with three options after selecting Initialization: Clear Learning Dictionary, Restore Default Settings and Initialize PS4. 

Clear Learning Dictionary and Restore Default Settings operate the same as they do on the PS5. Initialize PS4 operates in the same way as the Reset Your Console option does on the PS5. 

If you are looking to factory reset your PS4 before giving it away or selling it, selecting Initialize PS4 will do the trick. 

My Android phone’s a few years old, and while it doesn’t have the flashiest camera or thinnest design anymore, it still handles everything I need day to day. I used to think I’d have to upgrade just to get the newest features, but that’s not the case.

Thanks to long-term software support from companies like Google and Samsung, older phones can still get a lot of love. And with the right tweaks, I’ve managed to seriously boost my phone’s performance without spending a dime.

Before you start shopping for a new device, try a few of these tips. You might be surprised at how much better your phone can run with just a few small changes.

It’s true: Whether you have a Samsung Galaxy, Motorola or OnePlus phone, it’s likely that you can still optimize your battery life and give your phone a new lease on life by making a few easy adjustments. 

Note that there might be some differences between Android devices, and phone manufacturers often put their own software on top of Android. Certain settings may be missing or in a different place, depending on the version of Android you’re running and the maker of your phone.

Need more Android tips? Check out these five tips to make your Android feel like new again and how to use Android’s AI circle to search features.

Settings to improve your battery life

Living with a phone that has poor battery life can be infuriating, but there are some steps you can take to maximize each charge right from the very beginning:

1. Turn off auto screen brightness or adaptive brightness and set the brightness level slider to under 50%.

The brighter your screen, the more battery power it uses. 

To get to the setting, pull down the shortcut menu from the top of the screen and adjust the slider, if it’s there. Some phones may have a toggle for auto brightness in the shortcut panel; otherwise, you need to open the settings app and search for «brightness» to find the setting and turn it off.

2. Use Adaptive Battery and Battery Optimization.

These features focus on learning how you use your phone, including which apps you use and when, and then optimizing the apps and the amount of battery they use. 

Some Android phones will have a dedicated Battery section in the Settings app, while other phones (looking at you, Samsung) bury these settings. It’s a little different for each phone. I recommend opening your settings and searching for «battery» to find the right screen. Your phone may also have an adaptive charging setting that can monitor how quickly your phone battery charges overnight to preserve its health.

Why you should use dark mode more often

Another way to improve battery life while also helping save your eyes is to use Android’s dedicated dark mode. Any Android phone running Android 10 or newer will have a dedicated dark mode option. 

According to Google, dark mode not only reduces the strain that smartphone displays cause on our eyes but also improves battery life because it takes less power to display dark backgrounds on OLED displays (used in most flagship phones) than a white background. 

Depending on which version of Android your phone is running, and what company made your phone, you may have to dig around the settings app to find a dark mode. If your phone runs Android 10 or newer, you’ll be able to turn on systemwide dark mode. If it runs Android 9, don’t despair. Plenty of apps have their own dark mode option in the settings that you can use whether or not you have Android 10. 

To turn it on dark mode, open the Settings app and search for Dark Mode, Dark Theme or even Night Mode (as Samsung likes to call it). I suggest using dark mode all the time, but if you’re not sure, you can always set dark mode to automatically turn on based on a schedule, say from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. every day, or allow it to automatically switch based on your location at the time of sunset and sunrise. 

Keep your home screen free of clutter

Planning to hit up the Google Play Store for a bunch of new Android apps? Be prepared for a lot of icon clutter on your home screen, which is where shortcuts land every time you install something.

If you don’t want that, there’s a simple way out of this: Long-press on an empty area of your home screen and tap Settings. Find the option labeled something along the lines of Add icon to Home Screen or Add new apps to Home Screen and turn it off. 

Presto — No more icons on the home screen when you install new apps. You can still add shortcuts by dragging an app’s icon out of the app drawer, but they won’t appear on your home screen unless you want them to.

Read more: Best Android Phones You Can Buy in 2024

Set up Do Not Disturb so that you can better focus

If your phone routinely spends the night on your nightstand, you probably don’t want it beeping or buzzing every time there’s a call, message or Facebook alert — especially when you’re trying to sleep. Android offers a Do Not Disturb mode that will keep the phone more or less silent during designated hours. On some phones, this is referred to as the Downtime setting or even Quiet Time.

Head to Settings > Sounds (or Notifications), then look for Do Not Disturb or a similar name. If you can’t find it, search for it using the built-in search feature in your settings.

Using the feature, you can set up a range of hours when you want to turn off the digital noise. Don’t worry, any notifications you get while Do Not Disturb is turned on will still be waiting for you when you wake up. Also, you can typically make an exception that allows repeat callers and favorite contacts’ calls to go through. Turn that on. If someone is calling you in an emergency, odds are they are going to keep trying.

Always be prepared in case you lose your phone or it’s stolen

Is there anything worse than a lost or stolen phone? Only the knowledge that you could have tracked it down if you had turned on Google’s Find My Device feature.

To set yourself up for a successful recovery, here’s what you need to do: Open the Settings app and then search for Find My Device. It’s usually in the Security section of the Settings app.

Or if you have a Samsung device, you can use Samsung’s Find My Mobile service found in Settings > Biometrics and security > Find My Mobile. 

Once that’s enabled, you can head to android.com/find from any PC or mobile device and sign in to your account. Samsung users can visit findmymobile.samsung.com to find a lost phone. 

If you run into any trouble setting any of this up, be sure to read through our complete guide to finding a lost Android phone.

Assuming your phone is on and online, you should be able to see its location on a map. From there you can make it ring, lock it, set a lock screen note to tell whoever has it how to get it back to you or, worst-case scenario, remotely wipe the whole thing.

And always keep your phone up to date

As obvious as it may seem, bugs and other issues slowing down your Android device could potentially be fixed with a simple software update. 

Before you download and install the latest software update, make sure your device is connected to Wi-Fi, or else this won’t work.

Now, open the Settings application and type in Update. You’ll then either see Software update or System update — choose either one. Then just download the software, wait for a few minutes and install it when it’s ready. Your Android device will reboot and install the latest software update available.

There’s a lot more to learn about a new phone, of course. Here are the best ways to boost your cell signal, and here’s a flagship phone head-to-head comparison. Plus, check out CNET’s list of the best cases for your Samsung phone. More of an Apple fan? We have tips for boosting your iPhone’s performance, too.