Looking for clues for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on October 23 for puzzle #865 are easier than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2 out of 5.
Every day, we update this article with Connections hints and tips to help you find all 4 of today's answers so you can keep your Connections streak going. And if the clues aren't enough, you'll find all four answers below, with the category titles and the correlating words.
Today's Connections answer — hints to help you solve it
Unlike our guide to today's Wordle answer, where we recommend the best Wordle start words as your strategy, solving Connections relies on identifying connecting categories among 16 words. Each category's difficulty level is represented by a color; yellow is the easiest grouping, and purple is the most challenging. Once you've made 4 mistakes in your guesses, the answers will be revealed, so hints can be helpful.
Today's Connections words are: Doggy, Fine, Prize, Swag, Stone, Kitty, Ball, Ducky, Birdie, Go, Swell, Purse, Mixed, Pot, Puck, and Dandy.
If you need hints to solve the groupings, then here are the themes of each, based on the order of difficulty:
- 🟨 Yellow: Peachy
- 🟩 Green: Winnings
- 🟦 Blue: Pieces of Olympic sports equipment
- 🟪 Purple: ____ Bag
These hints should get you at least some of the way towards finding today's Connections answers. If not, then you can read on for bigger clues; or, if you just want to know the answer, then scroll down further.
Here's a larger hint: Grab the bag at the just fine olympics.
Today's Connections answers
So, what are today's Connections answers for game #865?
Drumroll, please...
- 🟨 Peachy: Dandy, ducky, fine, swell
- 🟩 Winnings: Kitty, pot, prize, purse
- 🟦 Pieces of Olympic sports equipment: Ball, birdie, puck, stone
- 🟪 ____ Bag: Doggy, go, mixed, swag
I began by winning when I saw kitty and pot, which put me in mind of the prize pool. So prize and purse were obvious nabs from there.
Briefly, I was stuck on birdie when I landed on doggy and thought "doggy bag." That opened up the other bags of go, swag and mixed. After a blue turn with ball bag gave me a strike, I got things right by swapping in go.
Sticking with ball and birdie, I was thinking sports equipment, but not specifically the Olympics. Puck and stone followed.
I had seen ducky earlier and was thinking of either the probably racist character from 16 Candles or "fine." I guess I didn't need to make that decision since dandy, fine, and swell were the last words left. So I ended peachy.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Utilities: Electric, gas, telephone, water
- 🟩 Adapt to fit one's needs: Fashion, mold, shape, tailor
- 🟦 Kinds of ants: Army, carpenter, fire, pharaoh
- 🟪 Copy ____: Cat, pasta, right, writer
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #864, which had a difficulty rating of 2.8 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.
I was not feeling well so I kind of rushed through today's puzzle so I didn't have to stare at a screen anymore. With that said, surprisingly clean run.
My first guess was with carpenter, and I was thinking contractor as it was next to electric in the grid. However, my second thought was ant. I knew pharaoh was a type of ant and it was off to the races. Army and fire were quick finds after that.
I was still thinking about contractors as I looked at mold, thinking molding. Which is how I got to shape and then fashion. It took a second to find tailor but we got there.
With purple and yellow left I was not in the mindset for thinking so I looked for yellow finding electric, gas, telephone and water as utilities. I saved it and entered in the other four words first.
That's how I got the purple set of copycat, copypasta, copyright and copywriter. A decent set on any other day.
If you're also feeling unwell perhaps take a break, maybe drink a nice tea, and have a lie down. It's my plan.
Connections tips — how to win at Connections
There are two ways to play Connections, get the answers as you solve them or solve for the hardest group, Purple, first.
For either playstyle, the best tip I can give is to not be afraid of the shuffle button, especially if you’ve solved a set but you’re certain it isn’t the Purple group. You can shuffle the grid until your solved quartet is in a somewhat staked off area.
For the purple group, you can expect to see a handful of category types: words missing a letter, homophones, words with specific suffixes or prefixes, and [blank] word (or word [blank]). There are others, but this is a majority of what you’ll see. It can help to look for purple connections through one of those lenses.
If you’re not hunting for purple specifically, then the best advice I have is to look for smaller connections. For example, Riddler and Joker are Batman villains. Once you’ve grouped that duo together it’s easier to find another set.
Finally, watch out for traps. Occasionally, the Connections makers like to throw in a set of words that should seem very obvious to most people. But picking them can give you a strike, something you want to save for when you aren’t really sure between a couple of clues.
The tricky bit is that sometimes the very obvious foursome is actually one of the answers (usually the yellow or green levels).
One way to work around this is to note the four clues you think are an obvious set. Highlight them by selecting the words but don’t hit submit. From there take a second look around the grid to see if anything else stands out to you.
Often these super obvious sets are actually individually spread out between the four groups. So, if you see Wick, Neo, Ted and Mnemonic, you might immediately think of Keanu Reeves movies, but it's a trick. Instead, use the individual words as launching points to discover other connections.
If you're new to the game you should also take a look at our How to play Connections guide.
Got some thoughts about today's puzzle you want to share? Email us at scott.younker@futurenet.com or alyse.stanley@futurenet.com to get in touch.
