NYT Connections today hints and answers — Tuesday, January 28 (#597)

NYTimes Connections
(Image credit: Future)

Looking for clues for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on January 28 for puzzle #597 are a bit harder than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 3.5 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.

Plus, we're including a reflection on Sunday's puzzle, #595, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.

Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #597. Only read on if you want to know today's Connections answers.

Alternatively, visit our how to play NYT Connections guide for tips on how to solve the puzzle without our help.

Today's Connections answer — hints to help you solve it

Get today's NYT Connections clues and answers for today's puzzle #597 on January 28.

(Image credit: New York Times)

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: Demon, Laugh, Joker, Airhead, Card, Band, Chess, Dumbbell, Snicker, Character, Mat, Mar, Bump, Mound, Dial, and Bench.

If you need hints to solve the groupings, then here are the themes of each, based on the order of difficulty:

  • 🟨 Yellow: Funny person
  • 🟩 Green: Resistance training equipment
  • 🟦 Blue: Candy bars minus "S"
  • 🟪 Purple: Speed ____

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: Snag a candy bar after a workout with a funny friend and keep the speed up.

Today's Connections answers

So, what are today's Connections answers for game #597?

Drumroll, please...

  • 🟨 Funny person: Card, character, joker, laugh
  • 🟩 Resistance training equipment: Band, bench, dumbbell, mat
  • 🟦 Candy bars minus "S": Airhead, Mar, Mound Snicker
  • 🟪 Speed ____: Bump, chess, demon, dial

My sweet tooth kicked off today's puzzle for me as I saw Snicker and Mar and was thinking candy bars. Mound and Airhead were quick finds from there.

I saw band and dumbbell which made me think of the gym. Which made mat and bench easy spots for me.

I got a little stuck here because I wasn't thinking funny but was focusing on Joker as a card. But I did see speed demon which opened up speed bump and speed dial. I briefly forgot about speed chess, but it was the only that made sense there for the purple grouping.

Which led to funny person with card, character, joker and laugh.

Yesterday's Connections answers

  • 🟨 Ways to get food: Farm, Fish, Gather, Hunt
  • 🟩 Keep apart: Cloister, Seclude, Separate, Silo
  • 🟦 Parts of a big rig: Axles, Hitch, Tractor, Trailer
  • 🟪 Dance events plus a letter: Bally, Discog, Promo, Raven

Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #595, which had a difficulty rating of 3 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion. We accidentally skipped Monday's puzzle, apologies there. Back to normal Tuesday.

Dave went all kinds of out of order on this one. He got the blue category first, locking in the parts of a truck quickly and easily. From there, he picked up on Seclude, Separate and Silo as words that meant to keep something alone. Dave guessed Cloister, as it didn't fit anywhere else, and he was right.

From there, Dave moved to Yellow, which was pretty evident as ways to get food. That only left him with purple, which was hard, and he probably would have never gotten it if it wasn't for the process of elimination.

Scott Younker
West Coast Reporter

Scott Younker is the West Coast Reporter at Tom’s Guide. He covers all the lastest tech news. He’s been involved in tech since 2011 at various outlets and is on an ongoing hunt to build the easiest to use home media system. When not writing about the latest devices, you are more than welcome to discuss board games or disc golf with him. 

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