Looking for Tuesday’s Connections hints and answers instead? You can find them here:
It’s Wednesday, and you know what that means: it’s time for another round of Connections!
It’s actually a bit of a special occasion, as this is the 500th game of Connections (not counting the Sports Edition). I wonder if there will be anything interesting about the grid…
Last time I’ll mention this for now, but I’m planning to start a discussion group (likely on Discord) for Connections and this column if enough of you are interested. If you are, let me know via email, direct message on Twitter or in the comments below. Thanks to those of you who have been in touch already! I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.
Today’s NYT Connections hints and answers for Wednesday, October 23, are coming right up.
How To Play Connections
Connections is a free, popular New York Times daily word game. You get a new puzzle at midnight every day. You can play on the NYT website or Games app.
You’re presented with a grid of 16 words. Your task is to arrange them into four groups of four by figuring out the links between them. The groups could be things like items you can click, names for research study participants or words preceded by a body part.
There’s only one solution for each puzzle, and you’ll need to be careful when it comes to words that might fit into more than one category. You can shuffle the words to perhaps help you see links between them.
Each group is color coded. The yellow group is usually the easiest to figure out, blue and green fall in the middle, and the purple group is usually the most difficult one. The purple group often involves wordplay.
Select four words you think go together and press Submit. If you make a guess and you’re incorrect, you’ll lose a life. If you’re close to having a correct group, you might see a message telling you that you’re one word away from getting it right, but you’ll still need to figure out which one to swap.
If you make four mistakes, it’s game over. Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen with the help of some hints, and, if you’re really struggling, today’s Connections answers. As with Wordle and other similar games, it’s easy to share results with your friends on social media and group chats.
What Are Today’s Connections Hints?
Scroll slowly! Just after the hints for each of today’s Connections groups, I’ll reveal what the groups are without immediately telling you which words go into them.
Today’s 16 words are…
- JEANS
- JACKET
- RAIN
- HAZE
- GOBLIN
- JAY
- BERET
- CAB
- MOON
- PAGES
- HEART
- THUMB
- PROSE
- SALAD
- WHALE
- JOURNALISM
And the hints for today’s groups are:
- Yellow group — like daffodils and gold
- Green group — characteristic of cucumbers and cartoon crocodiles
- Blue group — similar to certain crustaceans and Sonic the Hedgehog
- Purple group — technically analogous to the sky and blueberries
What Are Today’s Connections Groups?
Need some extra help?
Be warned: we’re starting to get into spoiler territory.
Today’s groups are…
- Yellow group — yellow ____
- Green group — green ____
- Blue group — blue ____
- Purple group — purple ____
What Are Today’s Connections Answers?
Spoiler alert! Don’t scroll any further down the page until you’re ready to find out today’s Connections answers.
This is your final warning!
Today’s Connections answers are…
- Yellow group — yellow ____ (CAB, JACKET, JOURNALISM, PAGES)
- Green group — green ____ (BERET, GOBLIN, SALAD, THUMB)
- Blue group — blue ____ (JAY, JEANS, MOON, WHALE)
- Purple group — purple ____ (HAZE, HEART, PROSE, RAIN)
I’m back to winning ways in the best possible fashion. Here’s how I fared:
🟪🟪🟪🟪
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟨🟨🟨🟨
I had a heavy hunch that there would be something funky going on with today’s game since it’s the 500th edition and all. I was a little disappointed when I first saw the grid, but a wry smile crept across my face once I figured out what was going on — even if it meant I was going to have a tough time coming up with hints.
Neither the sky nor blueberries are technically blue. So I’m pleased I figured out a way to make the purple clue a little tricky. (I spent more time than I ought to have making sure gold is actually yellow.)
I figured everything out before submitting any groups. As such, I managed to get what I call a true perfect game — getting the purples, blues, greens and yellows in that order with no mistakes. I don’t recall ever managing that before, so I was pretty happy.
There are some red herrings that almost tripped me up. Green jacket and blue beret nearly got me. But by writing out my guess for each group — I don’t use Google while playing Connections, but I allow myself a notebook — I was able to see how everything fit together.
That’s all there is to it for today’s Connections clues and answers. Be sure to check my blog for hints and the solution for Thursday’s game if you need them.
P.S. I’m ditching the horror theme for today so I can slide in this song. An absolute classic:
