Today's puzzle is pretty straightforward.
Find our guide to New York Times Connections answers and hints for November 1 below.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #1,239. Only read on if you want to know today's Connections answers.
Plus, we're including a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #1,238, 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
- Head
- Tripping
- Canine
- Lover
- Doggy
- Self
- Maturated
- Puppy
- Hound
- Incisor
- Brotherly
- Bicuspid
- Unrequited
- Trenched
- Molar
- Fiend
We have the Connections categories below, but here's a hint without the actual titles. Try this out:
- 🟨 Yellow: Dentist
- 🟩 Green: Star-crossed
- 🟦 Blue: Fan
- 🟪 Purple: A wet blanket by another name
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: Kinds of teeth
- 🟩 Green: Kinds of love
- 🟦 Blue: Enthusiast
- 🟪 Purple: Synonyms for 'soaked' with first letter changed
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 1 for puzzle #1,239 are a bit harder than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2.6 out of 5.
- 🟨 Kinds of teeth: Bicuspid, canine, incisor, molar
- 🟩 Kinds of love: Brotherly, puppy, self, unrequited
- 🟦 Enthusiast: Fiend, head, hound, lover
- 🟪 Synonyms for 'soaked' with first letter changed: Doggy, maturated, trenched, tripping
I went down the line today. Starting off, I assumed that the three good boy-related words — canine, doggy, and puppy — was probably a red herring, and I was right. Once I saw molar, I realized canine was talking about those mouth bones that need different insurance. Incisor and bicuspid rounded out the rest of yellow.
I understood what the green category was, but struck out trying to include doggy alongside brotherly, puppy, and unrequited. Once I took another look around the board, I realized self was the real answer they were looking for. Aren't we all?
Then came blue with all the different flavors of fan culture: fiend, head, hound, and lover.
That left a particularly tough purple as today's rote fill with, doggy, maturated, trenched, and tripping. Or should I say, Soggy, Saturated, Drenched, and Dripping.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Words meaning good that sound bad: Gnarly, killer, sick, wicked
- 🟩 Martini: Dirty, dry, shaken, up
- 🟦 Things with strings: Guitar, marionette, tassel, tennis racket
- 🟪 Starting with dog commands: Downfall, shakespeare, sitcom, staycation
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #1,238 which had a difficulty rating of 2.3 out of 5.
I legitimately thought the martini words of dirty, dry, shaken and up would be the blue set today. Ah well. Green it was. This is how the as it comes to me strategy backfires.
Admittedly, I did not see the dog commands, but I was looking at the four purple words as two words in one. Thus, downfall, shakespeare, sitcom, and staycation. No, I don't have a good reason why I included staycation.
I saw the strings next for the blue set of guitar, marionette, tassel and tennis racket.
And finally, the sweet words made up my final four: gnarly, killer, sick, wicked.
