Today's puzzle gets social over some written boxing.
Find our guide to New York Times Connections answers and hints for October 11 below.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #1,218. Only read on if you want to know today's Connections answers.
Plus, we're including a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #1,217, 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
- Harness
- Map
- Peruse
- Phone
- Gloves
- Cable
- Apply
- Patrick
- Electricity
- Wield
- Ice scraper
- Utilize
- Employ
- Registration
- Syntactic
- Internet
We have the Connections categories below, but here's a hint without the actual titles. Try this out:
- 🟨 Yellow: Work
- 🟩 Green: Budget
- 🟦 Blue: Passenger's side
- 🟪 Purple: Tactics
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: Put to use
- 🟩 Green: Monthly bills
- 🟦 Blue: Things you might find in a glove compartment
- 🟪 Purple: Ending in gambits
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 11 for puzzle #1,218 are easier than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2.3 out of 5.
- 🟨 Put to use: Apply, harness, utilize, wield
- 🟩 Monthly bills: Cable, electricity, internet, phone
- 🟦 Things you might find in a glove compartment: Gloves, ice scraper, map, registration
- 🟪 Ending in gambits: Employ, patrick, peruse, syntactic
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.
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 #1,217, which had a difficulty rating of 2 out of 5.
I started today's puzzle trying to figure out where "un" went. It was actually the social media words of feed, messages, notifications and profile that helped me figure it out.
I got to unboxing, which led to the other words: beatboxing, shadow boxing, and kickboxing. I followed up with the social media set.
Honestly, I wasn't cluing into the green set, so I entered the draft, notes, outline and thesis, which I thought was the yellow group.
And that left figure, gather, imagine and suppose as the final four.
