Looking for clues for today's Connections answers? The Connections answer on January 1 for puzzle #935 is the same difficulty as yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2.5 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: Shuck, Scotch, Head, Rat, Curse, Skin, Nut, Fly, Hound, Fingers, Spell, Shell, Charm, Buff, Peel, Hex
If you need hints to solve the groupings, then here are the themes of each, based on the order of difficulty:
- 🟨 Yellow: Bit Of Magic
- 🟩 Green: Remove The Covering From
- 🟦 Blue: "Enthusiast" Equivalent
- 🟪 Purple: Butter___
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: Cast a spell that peels off the coating while being excited about that fat.
Today's Connections answers
So, what are today's Connections answers for game #935?
Drumroll, please...
- 🟨 Bit Of Magic: Charm, Curse, Hex, Spell
- 🟩 Remove The Covering From: Peel, Shell, Shuck, Skin
- 🟦 "Enthusiast" Equivalent: Buff, Head, Hound, Rat
- 🟪 Butter___: Fingers, Fly, Nut, Scotch
As a Dungeons & Dragons nerd, the yellow category was incredibly easy today, as they're magic-related in a way that relates to RPGs.
From there, I locked in on the green, with peel, skin and shuck coming along right away. I was looking at 'shell' the wrong way, treating it as a noun instead of a verb. But after thinking for a bit, it came to me.
The pace dropped with the last two, but I actually figured out the butter ___ first. Scotch almost stumped me (I don't like butterscotch, so it didn't occur to me for a bit).
Process of elimination left me with the blue, and I'm not sure if I would have figured it out otherwise.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Happy New Year!: Ball Drop, Champagne Flute, Fireworks, Noisemaker
- 🟩 Places where things disappear: Bermuda Triangle, Black Hole, Couch Cushions, Dryer
- 🟦 Associated with Philadelphia: Brotherly Love, Cheesesteak, Liberty Bell, Rocky
- 🟪 Starting with bodies of water: Bay Leaf, Channel Surf, Sea Bass, Sound Barrier
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #934, which had a difficulty rating of 2.5 out of 5.
Anyone else play way too much Animal Crossing: New Horizons during lockdown and get jump scared by Sea Bass? (No, wait — it's at least a C+!) That and Bay Leaf caught my eye first for some reason, and my suspicion toward them only grew when I noticed Channel Surf could fall into their shared double entendre. But you don't hear Sound as much as Bay or Channel in everyday conversation unless you grow up near the coast, making Sound Barrier a bit trickier to spot.
I liked the festive approach the Connections crew took with today's yellow category, all symbols we associate with New Year's Eve: Ball Drop, Champagne Flute, Fireworks, and Noisemaker.
Brotherly Love could only be one thing, so I went hunting for a few other tropes about the city I'd gleaned from "It's Always Sunny" and "Abbott Elementary" to solve blue with Brotherly Love, Cheesesteak, Liberty Bell, and Rocky. Go birds.
That left Bermuda Triangle, Black Hole, Couch Cushions, and Dryer as today's rote fill for green.
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.
