NYT Connections today hints and answers — Friday, October 4 (#481)

NYTimes Connections
(Image credit: Future)

Looking for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on October 4 for puzzle #481 are significantly easier than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2.3 out of 5.

Every day, we update this article with Connections hints and tips to help you find all 4 of today's answers. And if the hints aren't enough, you'll find all 4 answers below, with the category titles and the correlating words. Plus, we're including a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #480, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.

Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #481. Only read on if you want to know today's Connections answers.  

Alternatively, visit our how to play NYT Connections guide for tips on how to solve the puzzle without our help.

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.

If you need hints to solve the groupings, then here are the themes of each, based on the order of difficulty:

  • 🟨 Yellow: Concavity
  • 🟩 Green: Small amount
  • 🟦 Blue: Disney characters
  • 🟪 Purple: ____ Date

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: Add a dollop of sour cream while considering the divot on the golf course before watching some Disney shows before going on a dinner date.

Today's Connections answers

So, what are today's Connections answers for game #481?

Drumroll, please...

  • 🟨 Concavity: Dab, dash, dollop, drop
  • 🟩 Small amount: Dab, dash, dollop, drop
  • 🟦 Disney characters: Daisy, Dale, Doc, Dory
  • 🟪 ____ Date: Delivery, dinner, dream, due

After what felt like a couple of weeks living in the fours and threes on rated difficulty today's low two was a breeze. Though, I admit I was second guessing myself after so many hard puzzles.

We started the day by grabbing dollop, dab and dash. For some reason I was convinced the fourth amount was dimple before I came to my senses and put in drop for the green category.

Yellow followed up nicely with dent, dimple, ding and divot.

Been watching a lot of Disney with my kid so Daisy, Dale, Doc (Hudson or the dwarf) and Dory was an easy snag.

Were this a harder puzzle, I would recommend adding a word or creating a phrase if you get stuck since today's purple is ____ [word] grouping. But it was the rote fill today wrapping an all D puzzle with Delivery date, dinner date, dream date and due date. Due and delivery mean functionally the same thing so that was the only real disappointment in today's puzzle.

Enjoy the weekend!

Yesterday's Connections answers

Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #480, which had a difficulty rating of 3.7 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.

Back over three again after a brief hiatus down into the twos. 

Surprisingly, today felt about as easy as yesterday as we went down the line with the latest quartet of categories.

To get things started we nabbed the yellow group with the beverages juice, milk, punch, soda. 

After that we took care of plants with fertilize, pot, prune, water. 

As usual, I find great dislike in the take a letter away categories so was stuck for a bit until I considered skis and socks as pairs. Earbud and bookend were picked up after a pant strike. 

From there we were able to do the rote fill in with the purple bugs minus the first letter. Which got us (B)louse, (P)ant, (S)mite, and (S)tick.

Scott Younker
West Coast Reporter

Scott Younker is the West Coast Reporter at Tom’s Guide. He covers all the lastest tech news. He’s been involved in tech since 2011 at various outlets and is on an ongoing hunt to build the easiest to use home media system. When not writing about the latest devices, you are more than welcome to discuss board games or disc golf with him. 

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