Today's puzzle endures postmarked linguistical shenanigans.
Find our guide to New York Times Connections answers and hints for October 11 below.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #1,219. Only read on if you want to know today's Connections answers.
Plus, we're including a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #1,218, 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
- Calamari
- Mandarin
- State
- Abbreviation
- Nickname
- Handle
- Shape
- Weather
- Condition
- Contraction
- Situation
- Bear
- Alkylamide
- Stand
- Elision
- Melamine
We have the Connections categories below, but here's a hint without the actual titles. Try this out:
- 🟨 Yellow: Diagnostics
- 🟩 Green: Endure
- 🟦 Blue: Verbal Consolidation
- 🟪 Purple: Stamps
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: Status
- 🟩 Green: Tolerate
- 🟦 Blue: Word shortenings, often
- 🟪 Purple: Words using U.S. postal abbreviations
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 12 for puzzle #1,219 are a bit harder than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2.5 out of 5.
- 🟨 Status: Condition, shape, situation, state
- 🟩 Tolerate: Bear, handle, stand, weather
- 🟦 Word shortenings, often: Abbreviation, contraction, elision, nickname
- 🟪 Words made using U.S. postal abbreviations: Alkylamide, calamari, mandarin, melamine
I really got to flex my English degree with today's puzzle. I started out by spotting a quartet of synonyms for green: bear, handle, stand, and weather.
Then I had to look up with elision was, but once I did, I realized it went hand in hand with abbreviation, contraction, and nickname for blue.
After that, yellow was easy enough to spot (condition, shape, situation, and state) as four words with similar meanings.
That left purple as today's rote fill with alkylamide, calamari, mandarin, and melamine.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Useful when writing a paper: Draft, notes, outline, thesis
- 🟩 Presume: Figure, gather, imagine, suppose
- 🟦 Social media settings: Feed, messages, notifications, profile
- 🟪 ____ Boxing: Beat, kick, shadow, un
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #1,218, which had a difficulty rating of 2.3 out of 5.
When I saw registration and map, I had a hunch we were in the ballpark of staples in the passenger's side glove box. Gloves, which really should have been the first obvious choice, popped out next, followed by a Midwest necessity with ice scraper.
I've solved enough Connections puzzle to start looking for the words within the words, and I noticed employ, patrick, and peruse all had endings with similar meanings. It took me longer than I'd care to admit to pick up on syntactic to round out purple.
Next came a laundry list that'll inspire dread and dollar signs in any adult's heart with cable, electricity, internet, and phone for green.
That left the easiest category, yellow, as today's rote fill with apply, harness, utilize, and wield.
