Good morning, dear connectors. Welcome to today’s Connections forum, where you can give and receive puzzle — and emotional — support.

Be warned: This article includes hints and comments that may contain spoilers for today’s puzzle. Solve Connections first, or scroll at your own risk.

Connections is released at midnight in your time zone. In order to accommodate all time zones, there will be two Connections Companions live every day, dated based on Eastern Standard Time.

If you find yourself on the wrong companion, check the number of your puzzle, and go to this page to find the corresponding companion.

Post your solve grid in the comments and see how your score compares with the editor’s rating, and one another’s.

Our testers rate each puzzle out of 5 according to its difficulty. They are paid to solve each puzzle in advance. Learn more about what they do.

Today’s difficulty is 3.8 out of 5.

Your own rating may be different. For a deeper and more personalized analysis of puzzle difficulty, please visit Connections Bot.

In Connections, each category has a different difficulty level. Yellow is the simplest, and purple is the most difficult. Click or tap each level to reveal one of the words in that category.

Join us here to solve Crosswords, The Mini, and other games by The New York Times.