Looking for clues for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on November 21 for puzzle #894 are harder than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 3.5 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: Racecar, Lapel pin, Screwdriver, Wolf eel, Bolt cutter, Greyhound, Scarf ring, Grumpy old man, Cosmopolitan, Lavalier, Clownfish, Awareness ribbon, Talking doll, Chow mein, Boutonniere, and Sea breeze.
If you need hints to solve the groupings, then here are the themes of each, based on the order of difficulty:
- 🟨 Yellow: Things worn on lapels
- 🟩 Green: Cocktails
- 🟦 Blue: Pixar protagonists
- 🟪 Purple: Starting with synonyms for "eat"
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: Wear Pixar cocktails while you eat.
Today's Connections answers
So, what are today's Connections answers for game #894?
Drumroll, please...
- 🟨 Things worn on lapels: Awareness ribbon, boutonniÈre
- 🟩 Cocktails: Cosmopolitan, greyhound, screwdriver, sea breeze
- 🟦 Pixar protagonists: Clownfish, grumpy old man, racecar, talking doll
- 🟪 Starting with synonyms for "eat": Bolt cutter, chow mein, scarf ring, wolf eel
Initially, I was looking for palindromes with racecar, but switched to cocktails as I saw sea breeze. Greyhound and screwdriver followed but it took me a moment to see the cosmopolitan, possibly the most famous of the four.
I returned to racecar and clicked on Pixar characters as I was looking for at the other words when I hit on clownfish. Grumpy old man I clocked from "Up" I eventually got to talking doll as in Woody from "Toy Story."
Next up up I was looking at boutonniere and lapel pin as things worn on suits. Lavalier and awareness ribbon fell in next.
Perhaps others will see bolt cutter, chow mein, scarf ring and wolf eel before I did but the eating motif never occurred to me. Ah well. That's the way it goes some days.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Adhere: Fix, paste, plaster, stick
- 🟩 Graze: Brush, kiss, skim, stroke
- 🟦 Parts of a tooth: Crown, enamel, pulp, root
- 🟪 Words that sound like two letters: Any, arty, decay, essay
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #893, which had a difficulty rating of 3 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.
I took an early strike while searching for tooth-related words, mostly because I forced tooth brush, toothpaste, tooth decay, and tooth enamel as a category.
Sticking with teeth, I pivoted to parts with enamel, crown and root. It took a moment to recall pulp, but I was determined to make a tooth-based group work.
Continuing the tooth work, I had brush which clicked with skim and kiss before I landed on stroke.
I wasn't entirely sure what the purple set was but that was my own fault for not saying the words out loud to myself. I was reading them and dissecting for clues.
But, I did see fix, paste, plaster and stick where I was thinking glue. I saved that set.
The words that sound like two letters were any (n,e), arty (r,t), decay (d,k), and essay (s,a).
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.
