Today's puzzle is a double-edged sword fish you'll want to think twice about.
Find our guide to New York Times Connections answers and hints for November 9 below.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #1,247. Only read on if you want to know today's Connections answers.
Plus, we're including a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #1,246, 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
- Steak knife
- Card Shark
- Con job
- Bootcut
- Navy seal
- Shell game
- Mint leaf
- Gamma ray
- Tape dispenser
- Low-rise
- Fun sponge
- Rip-off
- Skinny
- Flimflam
- Grapefruit spoon
- Distressed
We have the Connections categories below, but here's a hint without the actual titles. Try this out:
- 🟨 Yellow: Snake oil
- 🟩 Green: Pants
- 🟦 Blue: Sharp
- 🟪 Purple: Ending in marine life
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: Deceitful scheme
- 🟩 Green: Jeans descriptors
- 🟦 Blue: Things with serrated edges
- 🟪 Purple: Ending in sea creatures
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 9 for puzzle #1,247 are a bit harder than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2.3 out of 5.
- 🟨 Deceitful scheme: Con job, flimflam, rip-off, shell game
- 🟩 Jeans descriptors: Bootcut, distressed, low-rise, skinny
- 🟦 Things with serrated edges: Grapefruit spoon, mint leaf, steak knife, tape dispenser
- 🟪 Ending in sea creatures: Card shark, fun sponge, gamma ray, navy seal
It's an ordeal trying to find women's jeans when you're damn near six feet tall, so green stood out to me immediately today with bootcut, distressed, low-rise, and skinny.
After that I managed to spot the easiest category, yellow, with con job, flimflam, rip-off, and shell game.
I floundered for a bit before I realized that grapefruit spoon, mint leaf, steak knife, and tape dispenser all shared pointy bits.
That left purple as today's rote fill with card shark, fun sponge, gamma ray, and navy seal.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Muscular: Built, cut, jacked, ripped
- 🟩 Hair salon services: Blowout, color, extensions, trim
- 🟦 Things that help make sense of a situation: Clarity, context, insight, perspective
- 🟪 Vegetable homophones: Carat, charred, korn, leak
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #1,246 which had a difficulty rating of 1.3 out of 5.
I jumped around today, starting with striking out trying to fit cut in among the other salon services I spotted. I knew blowout and extensions were right, trim seemed right too, but it took me a bit to realize color could go along with them for green.
After that, I took a step back and got another view, which proved to be just the category for blue: clarity, context, insight, and perspective.
You can tell how rarely I hit the gym with how long it took me to get today's yellow, which is built, cut, jacked, and ripped.
That left purple as today's rote fill with a bit of wordplay with carat, charred, korn, and leak.
