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.

Today’s difficulty

The difficulty of each puzzle is determined by averaging the ratings provided by a panel of testers who are paid to solve each puzzle in advance to help us catch bugs, inconsistencies and other issues. A higher rating means the puzzle is more difficult.

Today’s difficulty is 2.3 out of 5.

Need a hint?

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.