Today's puzzle takes the air out of the ball.
Find our guide to New York Times Connections answers and hints for October 9 below.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #1,216. Only read on if you want to know today's Connections answers.
Plus, we're including a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #1,215, 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
- Power
- Guitar
- Conditioner
- Volume
- Blowout
- Kiss
- Sweep
- Highlights
- Scores
- Quotes
- Input
- Stats
- Channel
- Romp
- Recap
- Rout
We have the Connections categories below, but here's a hint without the actual titles. Try this out:
- 🟨 Yellow: Winning
- 🟩 Green: Boobtube
- 🟦 Blue: ESPN
- 🟪 Purple: Blow it up
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: Decisive victory
- 🟩 Green: Controlled by a TV remote
- 🟦 Blue: Features of a sports show
- 🟪 Purple: Air ____
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 9 for puzzle #1,216 are the same difficulty as yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2.3 out of 5.
- 🟨 Decisive victory: Blowout, romp, rout, sweep
- 🟩 Controlled by a TV remote: Channel, input, power, volume
- 🟦 Features of a sports show: Highlights, recap, scores, stats
- 🟪 Air ____: Conditioner, guitar, kiss, quotes
Most of my struggle with today's puzzle was deciding which color was what. I managed to see most of the sets surprisingly quickly.
I think the blue set of highlights, recap, scores, and stats could be yellow or green in a harder puzzle, so I wasn't entirely sure. But that's what I put in first, thinking ESPN.
Sticking with sports, I nabbed blowout, romp, rout and sweep next, which is a yellow in most grids.
Air quotes are what clicked the purple set for me with air conditioner, air guitar, and air kiss. Admittedly, I didn't see this one right away but had seen the green set earlier on which is why I saved it.
Anyway, the final four were remote buttons with channel, input, power, and volume.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Follows, as rules: Heeds, minds, regards, respects
- 🟩 Outdo: Best, eclipse, surpass, top
- 🟦 Things that come in threes: Cheers, stooges, strikes, wishes
- 🟪 Ending in actors named Tom: Autocruise, foolhardy, mulholland, thanks
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #1,215, which had a difficulty rating of 2.3 out of 5.
I was looking for trios based on the Stooges when I spotted Autocruise and thought Tom Cruise. That led to Mulholland and then foolhardy. It took a second to get to thanks, but we got there.
For some reason, I forgot about the threes when I snagged best, eclipse, surpass, and top to set the green set.
I returned to the threes with stooges, cheers, strikes, and wishes.
Which left the following words of heeds, minds, regards, and respects as the final four.
