Today's puzzle is not about Back to the Future.
Find our guide to New York Times Connections answers and hints for November 12 below.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #1,250. Only read on if you want to know today's Connections answers.
Plus, we're including a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #1,249, 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
- Great Scott
- Rocky Road
- You're Toast
- Flux Capacitor
- Moonlight Sonata
- Jiminy Cricket
- Marty McFly
- Comedy Roast
- Doc Brown
- Change Purse
- Arctic Char
- Good Heavens
- Shift Dress
- Gladiator Sandals
- Holy Smokes
- Swing Set
We have the Connections categories below, but here's a hint without the actual titles. Try this out:
- 🟨 Yellow: Holy Cow
- 🟩 Green: Alter
- 🟦 Blue: Chef
- 🟪 Purple: Going to the movies
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: "Gadzooks!"
- 🟩 Green: Starting with variations
- 🟦 Blue: Ending ways to cook things
- 🟪 Purple: Starting with Best Picture Oscar winners
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 November 12 for puzzle #1,250 are easier than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 1.7 out of 5.
- 🟨 Kinds of medicine: Green, rough, sand trap, tee box
- 🟩 Parts of a golf course: Green, rough, sand trap, tee box
- 🟦 Things filled with air: Air mattress, bubble, tire, whoopie cushion
- 🟪 Ending in palindromes: Afternoon, patoot, rheostats, shredder
Just in case, I put in the four clues that were clearly in reference to Back to the Future. Sometimes the super obvious sets are real; alas, today's is a trap.
With that out of my system, I spotted arctic char and locked in on the char portion, which led to comedy roast that clicked the cooking words. You're Toast and Doc Brown were obvious from there.
Moonlight Sonata is how I figured out the Oscar winners. I connected with Gladiator Sandals, which seemed to confirm it. That led to Rocky Road and, after a while, Marty McFly.
I figured it was yellow but wanted to chase Great Scott for fun, which quickly led to Jiminy Cricket, Good Heavens, and Holy Smokes.
And my final four were the green change purse, flux capacitor, shift dress, and swing set.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Kinds of medicine: Green, rough, sand trap, tee box
- 🟩 Parts of a golf course: Green, rough, sand trap, tee box
- 🟦 Things filled with air: Air mattress, bubble, tire, whoopie cushion
- 🟪 Ending in palindromes: Afternoon, patoot, rheostats, shredder
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #1,249 which had a difficulty rating of 2 out of 5.
I wasn't sure when I started, but I rolled the dice on what I was thinking of as things you have to blow up with tire, whoopie cushion, bubble, and air mattress.
I spotted the green and yellow sets pretty quickly, so I threw in the purple set with their palindromes next. That's afternoon, patoot, rheostats, and shredder.
Between green and yellow, it was a guess that I got correct by going with the golf words of green, rough, sand trap and tee box first.
Which left folk, herbal, holistic, and traditional, which I spent the entire game thinking of as teas.
