Today's puzzle endures postmarked linguistical shenanigans.
Find our guide to New York Times Connections answers and hints for October 11 below.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #1,220. Only read on if you want to know today's Connections answers.
Plus, we're including a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #1,219, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.
Alternatively, visit our how to play NYT Connections guide for tips on how to solve the puzzle without our help.
What is Connections
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.
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
Today's Connection Grid and Words
- Eye
- Lash
- Lips
- Jacket
- Tie
- Sense
- Change
- Belt
- Ring
- Taste
- Cup
- Hitch
- Cannon
- Tether
- Flair
- Ends
We have the Connections categories below, but here's a hint without the actual titles. Try this out:
- 🟨 Yellow: Judge
- 🟩 Green: Click
- 🟦 Blue: We are the ____
- 🟪 Purple: Tight, on opposite day
Today's Connections Group Hints
If you need hints to solve the groupings, then here are the themes of each, based on the order of difficulty:
- 🟨 Yellow: Discernment
- 🟩 Green: Fasten
- 🟦 Blue: Sports Championship Prizes
- 🟪 Purple: Loose ___
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.
Today's Connections answers
The Connections answers on October 13 for puzzle #1,220 are the same as yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2.5 out of 5.
- 🟨 Discernment: Eye, Flair, Sense, Taste
- 🟩 Fasten: Hitch, Lash, Tether, Tie
- 🟦 Sports Championship Prizes: Belt, Cup, Jacket, Ring
- 🟪 Loose ___: Cannon, Change, Ends, Lips
This was an easy Connections puzzle for me, but it did take me a little bit to get going. I actually went in order today, picking off the colors one by one.
Once I locked in on discernment for the yellow category, the rest fell into place pretty quickly, with the words for fastening jumping out to me.
From there, I had to take a moment to collect myself before noticing three of the four blue pieces as championships. I didn't think about jackets as a prize, a fact for which I'm embarrassed as a massive golf fan. Once I realized that the green jacket is the greatest prize in sports, I got purple through the process of elimination.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Status: Condition, shape, situation, state
- 🟩 Tolerate: Bear, handle, stand, weather
- 🟦 Word shortenings, often: Abbreviation, contraction, elision, nickname
- 🟪 Words made using U.S. postal abbreviations: Alkylamide, calamari, mandarin, melamine
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #1,2189 which had a difficulty rating of 2.5 out of 5.
I really got to flex my English degree with today's puzzle. I started out by spotting a quartet of synonyms for green: bear, handle, stand, and weather.
Then I had to look up with elision was, but once I did, I realized it went hand in hand with abbreviation, contraction, and nickname for blue.
After that, yellow was easy enough to spot (condition, shape, situation, and state) as four words with similar meanings.
That left purple as today's rote fill with alkylamide, calamari, mandarin, and melamine.
