Looking for clues for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on November 7 for puzzle #880 are easier than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 1.3 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: Hula hoop, Eggplant, Salsa verde, Bagel, Swing state, Relish, Animal print, Polka dot, Washer, Barney the dinosaur, Pest, Houndstooth, Inner tube, Chimichurri, Herringbone, and People eater.
If you need hints to solve the groupings, then here are the themes of each, based on the order of difficulty:
- 🟨 Yellow: Textile patterns
- 🟩 Green: Green condiments
- 🟦 Blue: Things with holes in the middle
- 🟪 Purple: Things that are purple
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: Purple textiles with holes in green.
Today's Connections answers
So, what are today's Connections answers for game #880?
Drumroll, please...
- 🟨 Textile patterns: Animal print, herringbone, houndstooth, polka dot
- 🟩 Green condiments: Chimichurri, pesto, relish, salsa verde
- 🟦 Things with holes in the middle: Bagel, hula hoop, inner tube, washer
- 🟪 Things that are purple: Barney the dinosaur, eggplant, people eater, swing state
I was looking at houndstooth and thinking patterns when I saw people eater and immediately thought of my favorite NFL team and the Purple People Eaters, a famous Minnesota Vikings defense in the 1970s.
I latched on to purple and that led to Barney and eggplant. It took a second to find swing state but we got there.
Returning to houndstooth, I went pattern hunting for animal print, herringbone and polka dot.
I followed it up with donut-shaped things in washer, inner tube, hula hoop and bagel.
And to close out the day, I snagged chimichurro, pesto, relish, and salsa verde which are green condiments.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Cost: Amount, figure, price, value
- 🟩 Ways to unlock a device: Face, fingerprint, password, pin
- 🟦 Parts of a chip: Aft, deck, fore, mast
- 🟪 Features of a cartoon cupid: Arrow, bow, diaper, wings
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #879, which had a difficulty rating of 2.8 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.
Another day, another opening strike. I started my day going for ship parts with aft, fore, deck and bow. Nope. So, I swapped out bow for mast to get the blue set.
Sticking with bow, I saw the Cupid connection in arrow, diaper and wing. I was honestly surprised this was the purple set. Though the ease of the next two make it more obvious.
Fingerprint and password stuck out to me as unlocks. Thus, pin and face made sense to lock up the green set.
I closed it out the day with the yellow set of amount, figure, price, and value.
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.
