Today's puzzle is a welcome sign for good jewelry and drinks.
Find our guide to New York Times Connections answers and hints for July 20 below.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #1,135. Only read on if you want to know today's Connections answers.
Plus, we're including a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #1,134, 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
- Oyster
- Meadow
- Wisdom
- Sound
- Button
- Bubble tea
- Portobello
- Menu
- Trumpet
- Icon
- Herald
- Swine
- Sakes
- Blare
- Link
- Alexa
We have the Connections categories below, but here's a hint without the actual titles. Try this out:
- 🟨 Yellow: Alarm
- 🟩 Green: Mouse
- 🟦 Blue: Necklace
- 🟪 Purple: The first round
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: Announce
- 🟩 Green: Things to click
- 🟦 Blue: Associated with pearls
- 🟪 Purple: Starting with alcoholic beverages
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 July 20 for puzzle #1,135 are a bit harder than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 3 out of 5.
- 🟨 Announce: Blare, herald, sound, trumpet
- 🟩 Things to click: Button, icon, link, menu
- 🟦 Associated with pearls: Bubble tea, oysters, swine, wisdom
- 🟪 Starting with alcoholic beverages: Alexa, meadow, portobellos, sakes
Today's Connections puzzle was a doozie. I first struck out by trying to connect all the types of mushrooms I saw on the board. Then I tried to take a step back and start simple with some synonyms I spotted that ended up being yellow: blare, herald, sound, and trumpet.
After that, I realized the clues button, icon, link, and menu were a bit more abstract than they seemed for green.
Bubble tea was really throwing me, but once I took another look around the board and saw wisdom, the connection finally clicked. I threw in swine and finally got rid of oyster to solve blue.
That left purple as today's rote fill with alexa, meadow, sakes, and the last remaining mushroom, portobello.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Circuit components: Breaker, fuse, relay, switch
- 🟩 Digital coupling verbs: Connect, join, pair, sync
- 🟦 Things toilets do: Drain, flush, refill, swirl
- 🟪 ___ face expressions: Game, long, poker, straight
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #1,134, which had a difficulty rating of 2.8 out of 5.
I went down the line today, starting with what I remembered from high school shop class with breaker, fuse, relay, and switch for yellow.
After that, I spotted a quartet of synonyms in connect, join, pair, and sync for green.
I thought the names for poker hands were too obvious from the start, and with only flush and straight left of the bunch, I figured flush had to be the more literal definition. From there, it was easy enough to spot drain, refill, and swirl for blue.
That left purple as today's rote fill with game, long, poker, and straight.
