Today's puzzle has some liars in its midst.
Find our guide to New York Times Connections answers and hints for October 21 below.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #1,228. Only read on if you want to know today's Connections answers.
Plus, we're including a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #1,227, 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
- English Horn
- Leapfrog
- Alpha Dog
- Sweetbread
- Hot Potato
- Mantis Shrimp
- Sunflowers
- Big Cheese
- American Gothic
- Grape-Nuts
- Campbell's Soup Can
- Duck Duck Goose
- Top Banana
- The Scream
- Musical Chairs
- Heavyweight
We have the Connections categories below, but here's a hint without the actual titles. Try this out:
- 🟨 Yellow: Play time
- 🟩 Green: BMOC
- 🟦 Blue: Art
- 🟪 Purple: False
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: Classic children's games
- 🟩 Green: Important person
- 🟦 Blue: Famous paintings
- 🟪 Purple: Double misnomers (neither word is an accurate description)
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 21 for puzzle #1,227 are a bit easier than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2 out of 5.
- 🟨 Finish: Close, end, stop, wrap
- 🟩 Lackey: Minion, poodle, puppet, stooge
- 🟦 Mustaches: Chevron, horseshoe, pencil, puppet, stooge
- 🟪 Homophones of Disney characters: Arial, bell, dock, mini
I've been reading Jory John's food books to my daughter, so Big Cheese was on the mind as I looked at the grid. Which is how I got to heavyweight, top banana and alpha dog.
Campbell's Soup Can put me in mind of Warhol and The Scream confirmed the paintings which got me to American Gothic and eventually Sunflowers.
Honestly, I saw the yellow set at some point so I put in the purple set without really grabbing the purple connection of double misnomers in English horn, grape-nuts, mantis shrimp and sweetbread. Honestly, a great category.
Which leaves duck duck goose, hot potato, leapfrog and musical chairs as my final four.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Finish: Close, end, stop, wrap
- 🟩 Lackey: Minion, poodle, puppet, stooge
- 🟦 Mustaches: Chevron, horseshoe, pencil, puppet, stooge
- 🟪 Homophones of Disney characters: Arial, bell, dock, mini
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #1,227 which had a difficulty rating of 2.6 out of 5.
Ended up going down the line in a "what I saw first" puzzle.
So I started with the ending grabbing stop, wrap, close and end.
Stooge and minion put me on the henchman track, so I grabbed puppet and poodle (though I was guessing there). I'm not certain I've ever heard a lackey referred to as a poodle.
I was trying to figure out chevron when horseshoe mustache clicked into place. That got me to pencil, walrus and chevron.
This left the Disney homophones with Arial (Ariel), Bell (Belle), Dock (Doc), and Mini (Minnie) as my final four.
