Looking for today's Connections answer for puzzle #534 from November 26, which is much easier than yesterday's puzzle, the Connections companion rated this puzzle 2.3 out of 5 for difficulty.

We update our Connections hints and tips daily. And if the hints are not enough, all four solutions are listed below, along with the category title and related words. In addition, for those of you reading this in a different time zone, I have included a reflection on yesterday's puzzle 533.

There are spoilers for Connection 534. Please only read this if you want to know the answer to today's connection.

Or see our NYT Connections How to Play Guide for tips on how to solve the puzzle without our help.

While today's wordle solution guide recommends the best wordle starting words as a strategy, the Connections solution depends on identifying the categories that are connected from the 16 words. The difficulty of each category is represented by a color, with yellow being the easiest grouping and purple the most difficult. Hints are helpful as the answer is displayed after four wrong guesses.

If you need a hint to solve the groupings, here are each theme in order of difficulty:

If you read these hints, you should at least find the answer to today's connection. If not, please continue reading for larger hints. Also, if you only want to know the answer, scroll down further.

Here's a bigger clue. To avoid being ignored at work, eat a cracker snack while you read.

Now, what's the answer to today's game #534 Connection?

Drum roll please.

It was relatively easy today, but if you don't know what the purple groups refer to, it's really important to move quickly through the other categories.

Fortunately, we had these items down. Start with bonuses and equity, then move on to promotions and raises as a good thing to get at work.

At one point I thought of a hotel group with Overlook, Ritz, and Plaza, but couldn't find number 4. overlook led to IGNORE, so I was thinking of a looked down on category that would fit DISCOUNT, but I forgot a bit.

I got stuck here for a moment because I had no idea what purple was, but club sandwich came to mind, which led to ritz crackers. I don't know why, but I was able to flip it over to animal crackers and goldfish.

As for purple, Eloise, especially “Eloise of the Square,” has been around since the 1950s, and the original author, Kay Thompson, and the illustrator, Hilary Knight, made four Eloise books. After finishing the puzzle, I looked up the book and found nothing about it. The books look interesting enough. But for those, like me, who have never come across these books as a child or with their own children, purple may be a head scratcher. Again, I'm glad I was able to knock out the other three groups and use this one book as a fill-in for memorization.

Reading this late in the day? According to the Connections Companion, this is the Connections solution to game #533, which had a difficulty level of 3 out of 5.

Today's puzzle was a difficult one, but Alise managed to get off to a good start by completing one of the most difficult categories on the board: anchor, bow, bridge, and deck.

She then tried to force her way through the remaining green categories of crowd, herd, organizer, and sea to score. The score could mean “a group of about 20 people,” but by Connection Crew's standards, that doesn't seem like a big group.

Yellow was again, score, land, win, the second hardest category I solved today. Therefore, the only memorization task today was purple, which took things to a philosophical level she had not anticipated.