Today's puzzle can be tricky if you don't slow down.
Find our guide to New York Times Connections answers and hints for October 29 below.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #1,236. Only read on if you want to know today's Connections answers.
Plus, we're including a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #1,235, 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
- Tuxedo
- Traffic Light
- Roman
- Emperor
- Parking Meter
- Candy Corn
- Neapolitan
- Piggy Bank
- Typewriter
- Wishing Well
- Gothic
- Antarctica
- Calico
- Waddle
- Sans
- Payphone
We have the Connections categories below, but here's a hint without the actual titles. Try this out:
- 🟨 Yellow: Pay up
- 🟩 Green: Bird
- 🟦 Blue: Type it up
- 🟪 Purple: Trios
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: Things you put coins into
- 🟩 Green: Associated with penguins
- 🟦 Blue: Ends of famous fonts
- 🟪 Purple: Things that feature three colors
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 29 for puzzle #1,236 are harder than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2.8 out of 5.
- 🟨 Things you put coins into: Parking meter, payphone, piggy bank, wishing well
- 🟩 Associated with penguins: Antarctica, emperor, tuxedo, waddle
- 🟦 Ends of famous fonts: Gothic, emperor, tuxedo, waddle
- 🟪 Things that feature three colors: Calico, candy corn, neapolitan, traffic light
I took several strikes before I saved the round with one strike remaining. My initial guesses were nowhere close to what was going on in the actual sets. Basically, I forced sets even though I wasn't truly finding the words. My guessed sets were cats, architecture and verb nouns. So don't do what I did.
What saved me was finally seeing sans and gothic as fonts. That let me to Roman of the Times variety and typewriter.
Honestly, I was guessing with the penguin set when I put Emperor, tuxedo, waddle, and Antarctica together.
Candy corn and Neapolitan are how I figured out the trio of colors set, which led to traffic light. It took a moment for calico to click because I was thinking of stripes.
Anyway, that left parking meter, payphone, piggy bank and wishing well as my final four.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Romantic liking: Attraction, crush, feelings, interest
- 🟩 Components of an email: Attachment, body, signature, subject
- 🟦 NASA Mars rovers: Curiosity, opportunity, perseverance, spirit
- 🟪 Homophones of paths: Coarse, rode, rout, weigh
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #1,235 which had a difficulty rating of 1.8 out of 5.
I was letting my eyes wander when Perseverance clicked me on to journey to Mars. Thus, curiosity, opportunity and spirit.
Admittedly, I spotted the green and yellow sets, so I put the purple set together next without bothering to see the connection of coarse (course), rode (road), rout (route), and weigh (way).
Then I took on the email words of attachment, body, signature and subject.
Which left attraction, crush, feelings and interest as my final four.
