Looking for clues for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on November 17 for puzzle #890 are a lot harder than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2.7 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.
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: Taboo, Slam Dunk, Go-Getter, Sure Thing, Shoo-In, Scattergories, Okey-Doke, Proscribed, Alley-Oop, Absolutely, Verboten, Fadeaway, Off-Limits, Leavening, Finger Roll, and Of Course
If you need hints to solve the groupings, then here are the themes of each, based on the order of difficulty:
- 🟨 Yellow: "You bet"
- 🟩 Green: Forbidden
- 🟦 Blue: Basketball shots
- 🟪 Purple: Starting with synonyms for 'scram!'
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: Shoot some hoops from out of bounds or get off the court
Today's Connections answers
So, what are today's Connections answers for game #890?
Drumroll, please...
- 🟨 You bet: Absolutely, Of Course, Okey-Doke, Sure Thing
- 🟩 Forbidden: Off-Limits, Proscribed, Taboo, Verboten
- 🟦 Basketball shots: Alley-Oop, Fadeaway, Finger Roll, Slam Dunk
- 🟪 Starting with synonyms for 'Scram!': Go-Getter, Leavening, Scattergories, Shoo-in
I almost went down the line today but got tripped up by my lack of sports knowledge yet again. I kicked things off with some colorful affirmatives for yellow with Absolutely, Of Course, Okey-Dokey, and Sure Thing.
After that I picked up green with a quartet of questionably legal synonyms: Off-limits, Proscribed, Taboo, and Verboten.
I figured Alley-Oop and Slam Dunk probaby had something to do with each other, but beyond that I was clueless. I started looking around for another connection, and Scattergories seemed like the odd duck in terms of definition. I took a less literal approach and realized it shared a related stem to Go-Getter, Leavening, and Shoo-In.
That left Fadeaway and Finger Rolls alongside the other clues I knew were related to basketball for blue, and now I know what those are.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Technique: Approach, Method, Philosophy, School
- 🟩 Run-of-the-mill: Banal, Everyday, Humdrum, Pedestrian
- 🟦 Stripy things: Barcode, IBM Logo, Rugby Shirt, Zebra
- 🟪 Words on Monopoly squares: Avenue, Parking, Railroad, Tax
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #889, which had a difficulty rating of 1.7 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.
Today's puzzle threw me for a loop because I would have bet money on the first connection I saw being yellow, and then once it wasn't, I felt like an idiot when the "easiest" connection didn't immediately pop out to me.
I kicked things off by picking up some unflashy synonyms (Banal, Everyday, Humdrum, and Pedestrian) for green.
Solving blue was also a piece of cake. IBM Logo seemed like the outlier initially, but once I saw Zebra, it all clicked. Rugby Shirt and Barcode rounded out blue.
That's when I started scratching my head. I had a family game night recently, so Avenue brought Monopoly to mind. I took a stab with Railroad, Parking, and Tax, even though I didn't remember a space for that last one (it's been a long time since I've played — we're more a Ticket to Ride kinda crowd) and solved purple.
With only Philosophy, Approach, School, and Method left for yellow, I was left kicking myself over not spotting it sooner.
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.
