Looking for clues for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on October 29 for puzzle #871 are slightly harder than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2.5 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.
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: Ouija Board, Backbone, Platform, Seance, Scrabble, Medium, Sacrum, Spirit, Outlet, Seitan, Abecedarium, Heart, Computer Keyboard, Courage, Venue, and Seychelles
If you need hints to solve the groupings, then here are the themes of each, based on the order of difficulty:
- 🟨 Yellow: Fortitude
- 🟩 Green: Channel
- 🟦 Blue: Words starting with the "Say" sound
- 🟪 Purple: Things featuring letters A through Z
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: Spell and say strength while channeling.
Today's Connections answers
So, what are today's Connections answers for game #871?
Drumroll, please...
- 🟨 Fortitude: Backbone, courage, heart, spirit
- 🟩 Channel: Medium, outlet, platform, venue
- 🟦 Words starting with the "say" sound: Sacrum, seitan, seychelles, seance
- 🟪 Things featuring letters A through Z: Abecedarium, computer keyboard, ouija board, scrabble
So, I fell for today's trap by immediately tapping ouija board, spirit, seance and medium. Strike one. So, you know, don't do that.
However, because there was an obvious trap like that, I knew it meant that each of those words could be used to form the categories.
But first, I needed to look up what an abecedarium was, a term I had never read. It turns out it's an inscription of the alphabet. Using that ouija board I was thinking of boards with letters. Which is why I picked keyboard and scrabble next. I was not thinking specifically of A to Z, but it worked.
I hit green next because I was looking at medium and thinking of platforms. Helpfully, platform was there for the picking. Outlet and venue were obvious after that.
Honestly, I wasn't thinking of "say," I put the blue category together because they all started with "S." Thus, sacrum, seitan, seychelles, seance. Sometimes the thinking is that simple.
And using spirit we got to backbone, courage, and heart as the final four.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Banality: Chestnut, cliche, platitude, trope
- 🟩 In the know: Aware, hip, savvy, wise
- 🟦 Remote control buttons: Back, home, menu, select
- 🟪 One-named singer plus starting letter: Gusher, kenya, ocher, pelvis
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #870, which had a difficulty rating of 2.3 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.
Others ran the page the last couple of days, but it's back to vibe-based solving with your usual host.
And in that vein, I watched Pirates of the Caribbean with my kids for the first time this weekend. So, of course, I locked in on savvy right away. Wise came next, and helpfully, aware was diagonally down. It took a second to find hip, but only because it was stashed away in a corner.
After knocking green out, I saw home and menu, and was put in mind of buttons. Which is why I snagged back and select next.
I noticed trope, platitude, and cliche way earlier, but didn't see the old saw of chestnut until now. I guessed this was the yellow set, so I saved it.
Instead, I put in gusher, kenya, ocher and pelvis without an idea of why those four were grouped. As always, I find myself annoyed at the "add a letter" sets, but they are a given, and I need to accept their existence.
Anyway, that st was mononym singers in gusher, kenya, ocher and pelvis.
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.
