Newsweek is back today with another round of handy hints and solutions for The New York Times‘ Connections game.
Each Connections puzzle includes 16 words, which players need to sort into four categories. The goal is to find the common theme for each category, represented by colors: yellow, green, blue, and purple. The categories increase in difficulty, with yellow being the simplest, followed by green, blue, and finally purple—the most challenging and often the most abstract. Some words may seem to fit multiple categories, which can be misleading.
Despite this, each group has only four unique words. For example, for yesterday’s puzzle, the words “Cap, Cover, Plug, Seal” made up the yellow category “things that prevent leaks.” The more difficult purple category’s answers were “Gator, Sooner, Volunteer, Wolverine,” which were names of college football team members.
The game’s editor, Wyna Liu, previously said there are varying levels of difficulty between the categories given each day.
“Some categories might be defined by their use of wordplay—palindromes, homophones, adding or dropping letters and words —rather than the literal meanings of the words on the cards. I saw three areas of potential difficulty that could be adjusted: the familiarity of the words, the ambiguity of their categorization and the variety of the wordplay,” Liu said.
When asked what tips she can provide players, she added: “One suggestion that may help save some guesses is if you start selecting cards and notice that there are five or more that belong to that category, try pivoting to a different category before making that first guess.”
Below are some tips to help you solve today’s puzzle, but if you don’t want to see the answers, scroll with caution.
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Connections #525 Clues for Sunday, November 17
Yellow: To be joined with a common goal.
Green: How tight clothing might appear to be.
Blue: Lowering oneself to perform an activity.
Purple: Where a certain punctuation mark may be useful.
Connections#525 Answers for Sunday, November 17
Yellow category: “ALLIANCE”
Yellow words: Association, guild, league, union
Green: “CLOSE-FITTING”
Green words: Clingy, sleek, slinky, snug
Blue: “OCCASIONS WHEN ONE MIGHT KNEEL”
Blue words: Apology, dubbing, prayer, proposal
Purple: “WHAT AN APOSTROPHE MIGHT INDICATE”
Purple words: Contraction, foot, possessive, quotation
Did you guess the answers correctly? If so, congratulations. If not, commiserations, you’ll be pleased to know there will be another opportunity tomorrow.
Connections is released at midnight in your local time zone and Newsweek will be back tomorrow with another round of hints and tips for Monday’s game.