Today's puzzle is idiom-heavy but all about the taps.
Find our guide to New York Times Connections answers and hints for October 23 below.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #1,230. Only read on if you want to know today's Connections answers.
Plus, we're including a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #1,229, 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
- Extension
- Love
- Direct
- Power
- Spinal
- Vocal
- Driver
- Distance
- Phone
- Time
- Update
- Open
- Frank
- Force
- Double
- Plugin
We have the Connections categories below, but here's a hint without the actual titles. Try this out:
- 🟨 Yellow: Straightforward
- 🟩 Green: Your PC needs a restart
- 🟦 Blue: Powerful
- 🟪 Purple: Poke
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: Forthright
- 🟩 Green: Things you install on a computer
- 🟦 Blue: Quantities in a formula for power
- 🟪 Purple: ____ Tap
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 23 for puzzle #1,230 are much easier than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2 out of 5.
- 🟨 Forthright: Direct, frank, open, vocal
- 🟩 Things you install on a computer: Driver, extension, plugin, update
- 🟦 Quantities in a formula for power: Distance, force, power, time
- 🟪 ____ Tap: Double, love, phone, spinal
Perhaps I'm showing my age, but Spinal is automatically Spinal Tap to to me, and then Love Tap confirmed the set for me; then I just had to hunt down double tap and phone tap.
The PC installations of driver, extension, plugin and update connected with me next, largely because of the word update.
I always find myself annoyed when one of the clues is in the title, but power comboed me with distance, force, and time.
This left the yellow set last with frank, open, vocal and direct.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Parts to be grasped: Grip, handle, hilt, knob
- 🟩 Kinds of sculptures: Bust, mobile, relief, statue
- 🟦 American football positions: End, guard, safety, tackle
- 🟪 Starts of bedding: Blank, comfort, pill, she
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #1,229 which had a difficulty rating of 3 out of 5.
I ended up going down the line.
The yellow set came together because I was trying to make "sword parts" happen with handle, grip, hilt, and, at first, guard. I took a couple of strikes, swapping things around before I took a chance on knob over guard.
The sculptures helped me reset when I grabbed relief, statue, bust and mobile.
The Football positions finally clicked with safety and end. That got me to guard and tackle.
Which left the bedding words of blank(et), comfort(er), pill(ow) and she(et).
