Looking for clues for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on November 3 for puzzle #876 are much harder than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 3.5 out of 5.
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
Unlike our guide to today's Wordle answer, where we recommend the best Wordle start words as your strategy, 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.
Today's Connections words are: Sea Monkey, Jigsaw Puzzle, Balloon Animal, Clown Nose, Whoopee Cushion, Maraschino Cherry, Funky Chicken, Lego Set, Fire Engine, Jumbo Shrimp, Pick-up Sticks, Bouncy Castle, Water Wings, Lite-Brite, Stop Sign, Dark and Horse
If you need hints to solve the groupings, then here are the themes of each, based on the order of difficulty:
- 🟨 Yellow: Things that are red
- 🟩 Green: Things filled with air
- 🟦 Blue: Things with a lot of pieces
- 🟪 Purple: Ending with animals
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.
Here's a larger hint: Go ape for 99 red balloons
Today's Connections answers
So, what are today's Connections answers for game #876?
Drumroll, please...
- 🟨 Things that are red: Clown Nose, Fire Engine, Maraschino Cherry, Stop Sign
- 🟩 Things filled with air: Balloon Animal, Bouncy Castle, Water Wings, Whoopee Cushion
- 🟦 Things with a lot of pieces: Jigsaw Puzzle, Lego Set, Lite-Brite, Pick-Up Sticks
- 🟪 Ending with animals: Dark Horse, Funky Chicken, Jumbo Shrimp, Sea Monkey
I must have really channeled my inner Hank Green today because I went down the line in reverse order. I honestly thought I had yellow with Dark Horse, Funky Chicken, Jumbo Shrimp, and Sea Monkey, because the animal connection was the first thing that jumped out at me. I was surprised to see it was purple.
Then I gathered up all the annoying bits and bobs that tend to get stepped with Jigsaw Puzzle, Lego set, Lite-brite, and Pick-up sticks for blue.
After that, I started looking around trying to find other clues themed to the circus or kids' birthday parties to go with Balloon Animal and Bouncy Castle. When I came up with nothing, I realized I was overcomplicating things and saw Water Wings and Whoopee Cushion would fill the remaining air for green.
That left me seeing red with today's yellow category, which seems so obvious now with Clown Nose, Fire Engine, Maraschino Cherry, and Stop Sign.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Goods to be transported: Cargo, Freight, Haul, Load
- 🟩 Light brown shades: Camel, Fawn, Khaki, Tan
- 🟦 Show signs of physical exertion: Cramp, Pant, Redden, Sweat
- 🟪 Starts of Zodiac signs: Aqua, Capri, Gem, Sag
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #875, which had a difficulty rating of 3.3 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.
I jumped in the shallow end this morning first with the yellow set (Cargo, Freight, Haul, and Load), because I was left scratching my head over the others.
I thought one of the categories might be related to types of pants but couldn't find any other clues that would go with Khaki and Capri. I started brainstorming other meanings of Khaki, and realized it matched Camel, Fawn, and Tan for green.
That opened up the puzzle for me. After that, I scooped up blue with Cramp, Pant, Redden, and Sweat.
Which left purple as today's rote fill with Aqua, Capri, Gem, and Sag.
Connections tips — how to win at Connections
There are two ways to play Connections, get the answers as you solve them or solve for the hardest group, Purple, first.
For either playstyle, the best tip I can give is to not be afraid of the shuffle button, especially if you’ve solved a set but you’re certain it isn’t the Purple group. You can shuffle the grid until your solved quartet is in a somewhat staked off area.
For the purple group, you can expect to see a handful of category types: words missing a letter, homophones, words with specific suffixes or prefixes, and [blank] word (or word [blank]). There are others, but this is a majority of what you’ll see. It can help to look for purple connections through one of those lenses.
If you’re not hunting for purple specifically, then the best advice I have is to look for smaller connections. For example, Riddler and Joker are Batman villains. Once you’ve grouped that duo together it’s easier to find another set.
Finally, watch out for traps. Occasionally, the Connections makers like to throw in a set of words that should seem very obvious to most people. But picking them can give you a strike, something you want to save for when you aren’t really sure between a couple of clues.
The tricky bit is that sometimes the very obvious foursome is actually one of the answers (usually the yellow or green levels).
One way to work around this is to note the four clues you think are an obvious set. Highlight them by selecting the words but don’t hit submit. From there take a second look around the grid to see if anything else stands out to you.
Often these super obvious sets are actually individually spread out between the four groups. So, if you see Wick, Neo, Ted and Mnemonic, you might immediately think of Keanu Reeves movies, but it's a trick. Instead, use the individual words as launching points to discover other connections.
If you're new to the game you should also take a look at our How to play Connections guide.
Got some thoughts about today's puzzle you want to share? Email us at scott.younker@futurenet.com or alyse.stanley@futurenet.com to get in touch.
