Today's puzzle won't break your brain if you're thinking clearly.
Find our guide to New York Times Connections answers and hints for November 13 below.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #1,251. Only read on if you want to know today's Connections answers.
Plus, we're including a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #1,250, 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
- Press
- Barge
- Scroll
- Water Skier
- Surf
- Teaser
- Waves
- Trailer
- Trust
- Exposure
- Search
- Freeze
- Coverage
- Glider
- Publicity
- Browse
We have the Connections categories below, but here's a hint without the actual titles. Try this out:
- 🟨 Yellow: Online
- 🟩 Green: Get them to notice
- 🟦 Blue: Dragging
- 🟪 Purple: Mind
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: Use the Internet
- 🟩 Green: Media Attention
- 🟦 Blue: Things That Are Towed
- 🟪 Purple: Brain ___
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 November 12 for puzzle #1,251 are harder than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2.3 out of 5.
- 🟨 Use the Internet: Browse, Scroll, Search, Surf
- 🟩 Media Attention: Coverage, Exposure, Press, Publicity
- 🟦 Things That Are Towed: Barge, Glider, Trailer, Water Skier
- 🟪 Brain ___: Freeze, Teaser, Trust, Waves
I started with water words first. Surf, waves and water skier looked like the obvious beach set, but there was no fourth, so I jumped off that boat.
Teaser and trailer jumped out as movie promos, so I tried finding more links for them, to no avail. Then I saw press, coverage, exposure and publicity, which are things I deal with as a member of the media all the time, and I locked that in.
As an avid internet user, surf finally made sense connected with browse, scroll and search.
From there, I had to pause and think for a minute before noticing the towing connection with Barge, Glider, Trailer and Water Skier, which only left me with purple and the Brain section.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 "Gadzooks!": Arctic Char, Comedy Roast, Doc Brown, You’re Toast
- 🟩 Starting with variations: Gladiator Sandals, Marty McFly, Moonlight Sonata, Rocky Road
- 🟦 Ending in ways to cook things: Arctic Char, Comedy Roast, Doc Brown, You’re Toast
- 🟪 Starting with Best Picture Oscar winners:
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #1,250 which had a difficulty rating of 1.7 out of 5.
Just in case, I put in the four clues that were clearly in reference to Back to the Future. Sometimes the super obvious sets are real; alas, today's is a trap.
With that out of my system, I spotted arctic char and locked in on the char portion, which led to comedy roast that clicked the cooking words. You're Toast and Doc Brown were obvious from there.
Moonlight Sonata is how I figured out the Oscar winners. I connected with Gladiator Sandals, which seemed to confirm it. That led to Rocky Road and, after a while, Marty McFly.
I figured it was yellow but wanted to chase Great Scott for fun, which quickly led to Jiminy Cricket, Good Heavens, and Holy Smokes.
And my final four were the green change purse, flux capacitor, shift dress, and swing set.
