Today's puzzle is pretty straightforward.
Find our guide to New York Times Connections answers and hints for October 31 below.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #1,238. Only read on if you want to know today's Connections answers.
Plus, we're including a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #1,237, 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
- Staycation
- Guitar
- Dirty
- Killer
- Sick
- Downfall
- Shaken
- Up
- Tennis Racket
- Shakespeare
- Wicked
- Tassel
- Sitcom
- Marionette
- Dry
- Gnarly
We have the Connections categories below, but here's a hint without the actual titles. Try this out:
- 🟨 Yellow: Da bomb
- 🟩 Green: Not stirred
- 🟦 Blue: Hung
- 🟪 Purple: Good boy
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: Words meaning good that sound bad
- 🟩 Green: Martini specifications
- 🟦 Blue: Things with strings
- 🟪 Purple: Starting with dog commands
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 31 for puzzle #1,238 are easier than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2.3 out of 5.
- 🟨 Words meaning good that sound bad: Gnarly, killer, sick, wicked
- 🟩 Martini: Dirty, dry, shaken, up
- 🟦 Things with strings: Guitar, marionette, tassel, tennis racket
- 🟪 Starting with dog commands: Downfall, shakespeare, sitcom, staycation
I legitimately thought the martini words of dirty, dry, shaken and up would be the blue set today. Ah well. Green it was. This is how the as it comes to me strategy backfires.
Admittedly, I did not see the dog commands, but I was looking at the four purple words as two words in one. Thus, downfall, shakespeare, sitcom, and staycation. No, I don't have a good reason why I included staycation.
I saw the strings next for the blue set of guitar, marionette, tassel and tennis racket.
And finally, the sweet words made up my final four: gnarly, killer, sick, wicked.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Parts of a camera: Flash, lens, shutter, viewfinder
- 🟩 Around a theater stage: Backdrop, curtain, pit, wings
- 🟦 Throw ____: Hands, pillow, rug, shade
- 🟪 Fruit with first letter changed: Demon, drape, glum, grange
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #1,237 which had a difficulty rating of 3 out of 5.
Grange (orange) was my odd-man out as I was solving today's puzzle and glum (plum) is how I found the fruits. Then it took a second to find drape (grape) and demon (lemon).
And then I fell apart staring at the remaining words; nothing would click for me. It's been that kind of week.
I reset with the camera words even though I didn't want to find the yellow so fast. Anyway, that's flash, lens, shutter, viewfinder.
Backdrop and curtain were kind of the start of my attempt at green, but I was still thinking photography, so I tried shade...and rug? Strike one.
Anyway, I thought backdrop and curtain were still in, so I threw in wings and pit as a guess without my conscious mind seeing the theater of it all.
Which left throw hands, throw pillow, throw rug, and throw shade as my final four. I've got Saturday to go on my Connections shift this week, and the break is needed for this connection-less brain.
