Looking for Thursday’s Connections hints and answers instead? You can find them here:
Hey there, everyone! Happy Friday. The weekend is almost upon us and no matter where you are in the world, I hope you make the most of it. I was hoping to squeeze in a late-season swim when the weather got unexpectedly warm this week, but the building management had already closed the outdoor pool. Bummer.
Anyway, today’s NYT Connections hints and answers for Friday, October 25, 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.
If you have an NYT All Access or Games subscription, you can access the Connections archive. This includes every previous game of Connections, so you can go back and play any of those that you have missed.
Aside from the first 60 games or so, you should be able to find my hints for each grid via Google if you need them! Just click here and add the date of the game for which you need clues or the answers to the search bar.
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…
- FORMAL
- COOKWARE
- QUESTION MARK
- RAVE
- PERIOD
- THUMBS UP
- BALL
- DOT
- BAD REVIEW
- HOP
- EXCLAMATION
- POINTS
- SATYR
- POINT
- CAMERA MOVEMENT
- HEART
- TITTLE
And the hints for today’s groups are:
- Yellow group — circular marks
- Green group — boogie all night
- Blue group — quick replies to messages
- Purple group — PETER and LABYRINTH might have fit in here
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 — •
- Green group — event with dancing
- Blue group — iPhone message Tapback responses
- Purple group — “Pan”
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 — • (DOT, PERIOD, POINT, TITTLE)
- Green group — event with dancing (BALL, FORMAL, HOP, RAVE)
- Blue group — iPhone message Tapback responses (EXCLAMATION POINTS, HEART, QUESTION MARK, THUMBS UP)
- Purple group — “Pan” (BAD REVIEW, CAMERA MOVEMENT, COOKWARE, SATYR)
What I thought was the start of an epic new streak after two perfect games almost came crashing to a halt. But I pulled one out of the bag for a third straight win. Here’s how I fared:
🟩🟦🟪🟦
🟦🟨🟦🟨
🟩🟨🟨🟨
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟪🟪🟪🟪
Quite the headscratcher today!
I thought I was being clever by noticing that the grid had the plural of EXCLAMATION POINTS, while the other punctuation-related words were in the singular. So I tried a guess of that, RAVE, THUMBS UP and BAD REVIEW, thinking that they’d be used in criticism, but I didn’t even get the “one away” message. Drat.
But then there was another twist. EXCLAMATION POINTS, PERIOD, QUESTION MARK and TITTLE (the little dot above “i” and “j”) didn’t form a group either. Nor was I “one away” from a group.
I finally got that message with a guess of TITTLE, POINT, BALL and DOT, before realizing that I had to swap out BALL for PERIOD for the yellows. Hey, I got one group!
It’s been a lonnnnnng time since I’ve heard of HOP being used in reference to an event where dancing takes place, but the greens finally clicked. Two groups!
As it turns out, I was right about my EXCLAMATION POINTS suspicion, but in the wrong way. The smaller grid made it easier to see the link between that, THUMBS UP and HEART as in quick responses to messages. It took a second to realize what the fourth word was, but after seeking an emoji-like noun, I deduced it. (Sorry, Android users.)
That left the purples for an overly belabored victory. I probably should have figured out that connection but alas.
Tapbacks, in case you’re wondering, is the term Apple uses for the little emoji responses that pop up when you hold your finger on a text in the Messages app. This used to be limited to a small number of symbols but after a recent iPhone, iPad and Mac update, you can now respond with whatever emoji you like. (Can you tell I spend most of my day writing about tech?)
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 Saturday’s game if you need them.
P.S. There’s really only one movie I can recommend today given the “Pan” reference. Pan’s Labyrinth features a faun rather than a SATYR and it doesn’t quite fit the horror theme for this month since it’s more of a dark fantasy film, but it’s absolutely astonishing. I haven’t seen it in a long time (I ought to fix that), but it’s easily one of the best movies of the 21st century so far:
If you’re so inclined, please do follow my blog for more coverage of Connections and other word games and even some occasional words about video games. It helps me out a lot!
