Today's puzzle takes a traditional walk on air.
Find our guide to New York Times Connections answers and hints for November 11 below.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #1,249. Only read on if you want to know today's Connections answers.
Plus, we're including a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #1,248, 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
- Shredder
- Herbal
- Patoot
- Whoopie Cushion
- Green
- Folk
- Bubble
- Rough
- Afternoon
- Rheostats
- Traditional
- Tire
- Sand Trap
- Holistic
- Air Mattress
- Tee Box
We have the Connections categories below, but here's a hint without the actual titles. Try this out:
- 🟨 Yellow: Healing
- 🟩 Green: Suh-wing
- 🟦 Blue: Blow it up
- 🟪 Purple: Back and forth
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: Kinds of medicine
- 🟩 Green: Parts of a golf course
- 🟦 Blue: Things filled with air
- 🟪 Purple: Ending in palindromes
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 11 for puzzle #1,249 are easier than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2 out of 5.
- 🟨 Kinds of medicine: Green, rough, sand trap, tee box
- 🟩 Parts of a golf course: Green, rough, sand trap, tee box
- 🟦 Things filled with air: Air mattress, bubble, tire, whoopie cushion
- 🟪 Ending in palindromes: Afternoon, patoot, rheostats, shredder
I wasn't sure when I started, but I rolled the dice on what I was thinking of as things you have to blow up with tire, whoopie cushion, bubble, and air mattress.
I spotted the green and yellow sets pretty quickly, so I threw in the purple set with their palindromes next. That's afternoon, patoot, rheostats, and shredder.
Between green and yellow, it was a guess that I got correct by going with the golf words of green, rough, sand trap and tee box first.
Which left folk, herbal, holistic, and traditional, which I spent the entire game thinking of as teas.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Hubbub: Brouhaha, foofaraw, hullabaloo, kerfuffle
- 🟩 Literary devices: Hyperbole, metonymy, onomatopoeia, oxymoron
- 🟦 Old-timey occupations: Apothecary, haberdasher, scrivener, wainwright
- 🟪 Words with five of one vowel: Abracadabra, beekeeper, invisibility, protozoology
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #1,248 which had a difficulty rating of 2.3 out of 5.
Haberdasher was my way into the puzzle today and scrivener confirmed the jobs for me alongside wainwright and apothecary. For those who may not know, a haberdasher deals in men's clothes, a scrivener prepares official documents, a wainwright repairs wagons, and an apothecary dispenses medicines.
Next up, I went after onomatopoeia, which put me in mind of literary words, which is why I grabbed metonymy, oxymoron and hyperbole.
I had seen the hubbub, so I skipped it in favor of the vowels of abracadabra, beekeeper, invisibility, and protozoology.
Which leaves brouhaha, foofaraw, hullabloo, and kerfuffle.
