Looking for today's Connections answer for puzzle #541 on December 3, which is much harder than yesterday's puzzle, the Connections companion rated this puzzle 3.8 out of 5 for difficulty.

We update our Connections clues and hints daily. And if the hints aren't 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 538.

There are spoilers for Connection #541. Only those who want to know the answer to today's connection should read on.

Alternatively, 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:

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

Here's a bigger clue: watch “The Sopranos” and “Sesame Street” and call out Pops and Letters.

Now for the answer to today's game #541 connection.

Drumroll, please.

It was difficult today.

It was easy to see Cookie, the Count, Oscar, and Snuffy as Sesame Street characters because my 5 year old watches them every day.

Grammy and Mummy caught my eye as family names, which led to pop, and later cuz it always reminds me of Paul Walker's awful line reading in 2Fast 2Furious (the worst movie in that franchise).

I'm stuck here. I was aware that one of the last two groups was The Sopranos, but I had never actually seen the show. It's one of those cultural touchstones that I just can't bring myself to watch at this point.

What saved me were a few clues. I knew that Edie Falco was in the show, so I assumed that the puzzle was looking for the name of the character. Also, there was clearly one EGOT name in each category, so Emmy was paired with Edie.

On the other hand, I knew that Tony would be paired with Junior and Carmela. How did we know the other names? I think it's pop culture infiltration.

That left Meadow, CeeCee, and Katie. Here I speculated. Katie was not a Sopranos name, I thought. At this point, I had not seen any names resembling the characters.

In this process I guessed Cece in the Sopranos grouping and took a strike. Strike one, but the meadow remained and I was able to fix it.

Thus, I survived a puzzle for which I did not have enough information about one of the supposedly easiest categories.

I am reading this late in the day. According to Connections Companion, the difficulty level was 3 out of 5.

I had to take Sunday and Monday off this week because I worked Black Friday and Cyber Monday. It will be back to normal tomorrow.

With the MLB mascot yesterday and the purple category today, the Connections crew is still all about baseball in November.

Anyway, I saw the knuckle and thought pitch. This quickly led to fastballs, curves, and screwballs. Purple out.

Still thinking baseball, I saw the swipe and thought stolen base, so I went lift, palm, pocket.

Ace, Crash, and Nail were here to kill it, but Rock wasn't sure. I was focused on jazz and modern. And it came to pass. [Jazz, modern, swing, tap. It is always interesting to see which category different minds see first. I wonder what the statistical difference is between those who associate yellow with purple and those who associate purple with yellow; unlike Wordle, I don't know if there is such an overall statistic for connection.