Looking for clues for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on October 9 for puzzle #851 are easier than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2.8 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 yesterday's puzzle, #850, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #851. 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
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: Limestone, Gorilla, Photo, Figment, Fancy, Dateline, Plumber, Slate, Fiction, Princess, Flint, Caption, Marble, Lede, Hedgehog, and Invention.
If you need hints to solve the groupings, then here are the themes of each, based on the order of difficulty:
- 🟨 Yellow: Fantasy
- 🟩 Green: Kinds of rocks
- 🟦 Blue: News article features
- 🟪 Purple: Title figures in classic video games
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: Read a fantasy article about classic video game rocks.
Today's Connections answers
So, what are today's Connections answers for game #851?
Drumroll, please...
- 🟨 Fantasy: Fancy, fiction, figment, invention
- 🟩 Kinds of rocks: Flint, limestone, marble, slate
- 🟦 News article features: Caption, dateline, lede, photo
- 🟪 Title figures in classic video games: Gorilla, hedgehog, plumber, princess
In a nice little zigzag, the first two words I focused on were plumber and hedgehog, which immediately put me in mind of Mario and Sonic. Princess and gorilla completed the zag with, I assume, Zelda and Donkey Kong.
As someone who went to school for magazine writing, I'm not sure I would be able to forgive myself if I missed dateline, lede, photo and caption as article features.
Slate, limestone and marble jumped out to me as countertops. I'm not sure if anyone makes flint ones but it works here as a rock.
And I closed today out with fancy, fiction, figment and invention.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Finest: Best, cream, elite, select
- 🟩 Rock music subgenres: Alternative, arena, classic, garage
- 🟦 Paint finishes: Eggshell, gloss, matte, pearl
- 🟪 Kinds of beds: Flower, nail, oyster, river
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #850, which had a difficulty rating of 3.5 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.
I went down the line today after starting with a strike. My initial guess was shades of white paint with cream, eggshell, oyster, and pearl.
Sticking with cream, my next thought was "cream of the crop," which led to elite, best, and select.
Alternative was next to cream, and it's where I went next, thinking alt rock. Using that basis, I got to arena rock, garage rock, and classic rock.
I took another strike when I got stuck on paint again and totally forgot about eggshell as a finish. My first thought was gloss, matte, pearl, and for some reason, I had oyster. My thoughts mystify even me.
The second strike got me to switch out oyster for the suddenly remembered eggshell.
Which left flower, nail, oyster, and river as beds.
Connections tips — how to win at Connections
There are two ways to play Connections, get the answers as you solve them or solve for the hardest group, Purple, first.
For either playstyle, the best tip I can give is to not be afraid of the shuffle button, especially if you’ve solved a set but you’re certain it isn’t the Purple group. You can shuffle the grid until your solved quartet is in a somewhat staked off area.
For the purple group, you can expect to see a handful of category types: words missing a letter, homophones, words with specific suffixes or prefixes, and [blank] word (or word [blank]). There are others, but this is a majority of what you’ll see. It can help to look for purple connections through one of those lenses.
If you’re not hunting for purple specifically, then the best advice I have is to look for smaller connections. For example, Riddler and Joker are Batman villains. Once you’ve grouped that duo together it’s easier to find another set.
Finally, watch out for traps. Occasionally, the Connections makers like to throw in a set of words that should seem very obvious to most people. But picking them can give you a strike, something you want to save for when you aren’t really sure between a couple of clues.
The tricky bit is that sometimes the very obvious foursome is actually one of the answers (usually the yellow or green levels).
One way to work around this is to note the four clues you think are an obvious set. Highlight them by selecting the words but don’t hit submit. From there take a second look around the grid to see if anything else stands out to you.
Often these super obvious sets are actually individually spread out between the four groups. So, if you see Wick, Neo, Ted and Mnemonic, you might immediately think of Keanu Reeves movies, but it's a trick. Instead, use the individual words as launching points to discover other connections.
If you're new to the game you should also take a look at our How to play Connections guide.
Got some thoughts about today's puzzle you want to share? Email us at scott.younker@futurenet.com or alyse.stanley@futurenet.com to get in touch.
