Today’s Connections
Credit: NYT / Erik Kain
Another Sunday, another NYT Connections to solve. We have four groups of words to cobble together: Yellow, Green, Blue and Purple. If you’re struggling with some of the trickier combos today, read on for some hints and the answers below.
Also make sure to check out my latest weekend streaming guide to for all the best new shows and movies out this weekend.
Let’s group some words!
If you’re looking for Saturday’s Connections guide, it’s right here.
How To Play Connections
Connections is the second-most popular NYT Games puzzle game outside of the main crossword itself, and an extremely fun, free offering that will get your brain moving every day. Play it right here.
The goal is to take a group of 16 words and find links between four pairs of four of them. They could be specific categories of terms, or they could be little world puzzles where words may come before or after them you need to figure out. And they get more complicated from there.
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There is only one set of right answers for this, and you only get a certain number of tries so you can’t just spam around until you find something. There are difficulty tiers coded by color, which will usually go from yellow, blue/green to purple as difficulty increases, so know that going in and when you start linking them together.
You pick the four words you think are linked and either you will get a solve and a lit up row that shows you how you were connected. If you’re close, it will tell you that you’re one away. Again, four mistakes you lose, but if you want to know the answers without failing, either come here, or delete your web cookies and try again. If you want to play more puzzles, you can get an NYT Games subscription to access the full archives of all past puzzles.
NYT Connections Hints And Answers – Sunday, October 19
These are the hints that are laid out on the puzzle board itself, but after that, we will get into spoiler territory with some hints and eventually the answers. First, here are today’s Connections words:
- Noodle
- Brush
- Cranium
- Mirror
- Pufnstuf
- Reflect
- Tight
- Muse
- Compact
- Lunar
- Nail file
- Thick
- Dense
- Deliberate
- Cronut
- Tweezers
Hints for the Connections groups today are:
- 🟡Yellow group – Pretty yourself up.
- 🔵Blue group – Brain work.
- 🟢Green group – Shove it all in there.
- 🟣Purple group – Birds hiding in words.
What Are Today’s Connections Groups?
Alright, the full spoilers follow here as we get into what the groups are today:
- 🟡Yellow group – Personal grooming items.
- 🔵Blue group – Ponder
- 🟢Green group – Packed
- 🟣Purple group – Starting with bird homophones
What Are Today’s Connections Answers?
The full-on answers are below for each group, finally inserting the four words in each category. Spoilers follow if you do not want to get this far. The Connections answers are:
- 🟡Yellow group – Brush, mirror, nail, tweezers
- 🔵Blue group – Deliberate, Muse, Noodle, Reflect
- 🟢Green group – Compact, Dense, Thick, Tight
- 🟣Purple group – Cranium, Cronut, Lunar, Pufnstuf
Today’s Connections
Screenshot: Erik Kain
I got all the groups in the “correct” order today from easiest (Yellow) to hardest (Purple). As is often the case, I had no idea what the connection was between the Purple words in the end, but the explanation made that obvious enough: Bird homophones at the start of each word. CRANE / CRONE / LOON / PUFFIN for CRANIUM / CRONE/ LUNAR / PUFNSTUF.
Of course, CRANIUM was here to throw us off the scent with words like NOODLE and the other thinking words. MIRROR and REFLECT were both potentially in the same group. I originally thought COMPACT was going to be with the other grooming items, since a compact has a MIRROR and is used for doing makeup.
I got there evetentually, however!
How did you do on today’s Connections? Let me know on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.
Find more guides to Wordle, Strands and the Mini Crossword on my blog where you can also follow me for TV and movie and video game coverage. Read my weekend streaming guide right here.