Today's puzzle features hidden words in every clue.
Find our guide to New York Times Connections answers and hints for October 5 below.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #1,212. Only read on if you want to know today's Connections answers.
Plus, we're including a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #1,211, 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
- Parent
- Advisory
- Explicit
- Content
- Chess
- Please
- Message
- Graphic
- Strong
- Sapphire
- Suggestive
- Serene
- Peaceful
- Ironing
- Sloan
- Placid
We have the Connections categories below, but here's a hint without the actual titles. Try this out:
- 🟨 Yellow: Chill
- 🟩 Green: NSFW
- 🟦 Blue: It doesn't hit back
- 🟪 Purple: Can I get that?
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: Calm
- 🟩 Green: Adjectives For Mature Content
- 🟦 Blue: Kinds Of Boards
- 🟪 Purple: Ending In Ways To Temporarily Acquire
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 4 for puzzle #1,212 are harder than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2.3 out of 5.
- 🟨 Calm: Content, Peaceful, Placid, Serene
- 🟩 Adjectives For Mature Content: Explicit, Graphic, Strong, Suggestive
- 🟦 Kinds Of Boards: Advisory, Chess, Ironing, Message
- 🟪 Ending In Ways To Temporarily Acquire: Parent, Please, Sapphire, Sloan
Today's Connections has a clever red herring: the words Parent, Advisory, Explicit and Content spell out the "Parental Advisory: Explicit Content," a phrase we all remember from when buying CDs.
However, I started with the green group, since those grabbed my attention quickly, with the red herring having me thinking about warnings for adult content.
From there, the blue group came next, but it took a couple of guesses before I locked in on it. Eventually, I realized that "board" was the link between them.
Purple was almost impossible, but thankfully it was the last group left, so I locked in the four remaining choices to finish the puzzle.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Starting with terms for "toilet": Bunch, Heap, Lot, Stack
- 🟩 Ending in musicals: Ball, Net, Paddle, Table
- 🟦 Starting with U.S. museums: Collar, Gavel, Robe, Wig
- 🟪 Ending in fantasy creatures: Auction, Film, Partner, Treatment
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #1,211, which had a difficulty rating of 1.8 out of 5.
As you can see, I went a little out of order today, getting blue first and then sliding through the rest of the puzzle.
But what the image doesn't show you is that I used all but one of my guesses before locking in and getting the rest on the first try. I will admit, though, that I may not have gotten purple were it not for process of elimination, as I didn't make the connection to the things being silent ___.
Hopefully you do well with today's puzzle, because it's a fun one today.
