Today's puzzle is a fashionable tour through Europe.
Find our guide to New York Times Connections answers and hints for October 16 below.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #1,223. Only read on if you want to know today's Connections answers.
Plus, we're including a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #1,222, 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
- Hungary
- Hungry
- Hippo
- Chicken
- Chip
- Chad
- Coolidge
- Cyrus
- Span
- Mark
- Laos
- Nick
- Paraguay
- Smarties
- Bulgari
- Scratch
We have the Connections categories below, but here's a hint without the actual titles. Try this out:
- 🟨 Yellow: Mar
- 🟩 Green: Surrounded
- 🟦 Blue: EU
- 🟪 Purple: Fashionable
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: Surface imperfections
- 🟩 Green: Landlocked countries
- 🟦 Blue: European countries minus a letter
- 🟪 Purple: Starting with words for "stylish"
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 16 for puzzle #1,223 are harder than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 3 out of 5.
- 🟨 Surface imperfections: Chip, mark, nick, scratch
- 🟩 Landlocked countries: Chad, hungary, laos, paraguay
- 🟦 European countries minus a letter: Bulgari, cyrus, hungry, span
- 🟪 Starting with words for "stylish": Chicken, coolidge, hippo, smarties
I'm glad that I got the countries out of the way right away in today's puzzle with Chad, Hungary, Laos and Paraguay.
I say that mostly because Hungary and Hungry were so obvious that I wasn't entirely sure if it was what I thought it would be when I spotted Cyrus. I put in the countries just to see, which locked in the blue for me.
So, it's Hungry (Hungary), Cyrus (Cyprus), Bulgari (Bulgaria) and Span (Spain).
I spotted the yellow set so I put in the purple group of chicken, coolidge, hippo, and smarties without really seeing the stylish connection.
And that left chip, mark, nick and scratch.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Ways to preserve food: Cure, dry, pickle, smoke
- 🟩 Things you can score in sports: Basket, goal, run, touchdown
- 🟦 Lowest part: Base, bottom, foot, foundation
- 🟪 Low landforms with a letter changed: Cannon, forge, racine, valley
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #1,222 which had a difficulty rating of 2.5 out of 5.
It felt like I was falling apart on today's puzzle. I fell for the ball trap when I tried to put base, basket, foot and volley together.
I had to reset, so I took the other set I spotted, starting with smoke and cure, which led to pickle and dry.
I spotted the scoring words of basket, goal, run and touchdown but saved them. Spoiler: this was my last set.
My next set was actually foot, foundation, base and bottom.
Then I put in cannon, forge, racine and volley without seeing the connection. Seems to me these are supposed to be canyon, gorge, ravine and valley.
