Connections, The New York Times puzzle, is back with another offering today, Monday October 14.
Connections is a daily puzzle that consists of 16 words that need to be separated into four categories. The challenge for players is to identify a common thread between the words in each category: yellow, green, blue, and purple.
The difficulty increases according to color, with yellow being the most straightforward, followed by green, then blue and finally purple, which is considered the most difficult, and is usually the most abstract.
If you need an example, one previous puzzle saw the words juice, milk, soda, and punch make the category “beverages,” while bookend, earbud, ski and sock made “items bought in pairs.”
Players can find themselves stumped by the fact that words can sometimes seem to fit into two categories. Even if it may be designed to confuse the player, each group can only have four unique words.
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The daily word puzzle is edited by Wyna Liu, who shared some playing tips with Newsweek ahead of the game’s first anniversary in June.
“My best piece advice is to wait as long as you can before guessing,” she said. “You may see the board and have completely identified the category, seeing five words that could belong in that category.”
“Don’t try to guess the four words in that category, because even though you know what the fifth member is, you won’t know which of the four it might not be.”
She recommended that if you get stuck, move on and try to solve another category first, because this is a way to remove any words that could belong to more than one group, reducing a risk of a mistake, because “your four guesses go by extremely quickly.”
Connections #491 Clues for Monday, October 14
Yellow: Done when looking for something.
Green: Very loud and related to the weather.
Blue: For those with long locks, keeping it out of the way.
Purple: Foliage, although not necessarily literally.
Connections #491 Answers for Monday, October 14
Yellow category: “RUMMAGE”
Yellow words: Comb, dig, root, sift
Green: “SOUNDS OF THUNDER”
Green words: Clap, peal, roll, rumble
Blue: “WAYS TO WEAR YOUR HAIR UP”
Blue words: Braid, bun, pony, twist
Purple: “THINGS THAT CAN HAVE LEAVES”
Purple words: Book, salad, table, tree
Did you guess the answers correctly? If so, congratulations! If not, commiserations—Connections is released at midnight in your local time zone, and Newsweek will be back on Tuesday with another round of hints and tips.
