Today's puzzle has no balls.
Find our guide to New York Times Connections answers and hints for October 15 below.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #1,222. Only read on if you want to know today's Connections answers.
Plus, we're including a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #1,221, 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
- Smoke
- Basket
- Dry
- Foot
- Volley
- Cannon
- Run
- Pickle
- Base
- Goal
- Forge
- Foundation
- Cure
- Racine
- Bottom
- Touchdown
We have the Connections categories below, but here's a hint without the actual titles. Try this out:
- 🟨 Yellow: Cooking
- 🟩 Green: Points
- 🟦 Blue: Under
- 🟪 Purple: Dip on a map
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: Ways to preserve food
- 🟩 Green: Things you can score in sports
- 🟦 Blue: Lowest part
- 🟪 Purple: Low landforms with a 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 October 15 for puzzle #1,222 are the same as yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2.5 out of 5.
- 🟨 Ways to preserve food: Cure, dry, pickle, smoke
- 🟩 Things you can score in sports: Basket, goal, run, touchdown
- 🟦 Lowest part: Base, bottom, foot, foundation
- 🟪 Low landforms with a letter changed: Cannon, forge, racine, valley
It felt like I was falling apart on today's puzzle. I fell for the ball trap when I tried to put base, basket, foot and volley together.
I had to reset, so I took the other set I spotted, starting with smoke and cure, which led to pickle and dry.
I spotted the scoring words of basket, goal, run and touchdown but saved them. Spoiler: this was my last set.
My next set was actually foot, foundation, base and bottom.
Then I put in cannon, forge, racine and volley without seeing the connection. Seems to me these are supposed to be canyon, gorge, ravine and valley.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Discernment: Eye, Flair, Sense, Taste
- 🟩 Fasten: Hitch, Lash, Tether, Tie
- 🟦 Sports Championship Prizes: Belt, Cup, Jacket, Ring
- 🟪 Loose ___: Cannon, Change, Ends, Lips
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #1,221 which had a difficulty rating of 2.5 out of 5.
It's weird that they couldn't find four Marvel heroes to go with The Hulk, The Punisher and The Thing, but they did stick The Flash in. Anyway, that's where I started.
Then I took the Tennis terms with volley, serve, slice, and smash.
I wasn't really seeing fee, fi, fo, fum but I did spot the yellow set so I put in feed, fiery, foment and fumble as my third choice.
Which left flicker, suggestion, trace and whiff to fill up slot number 4.
