Today's puzzle is stops henchmen with knockoff Disney characters.
Find our guide to New York Times Connections answers and hints for October 20 below.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #1,227. Only read on if you want to know today's Connections answers.
Plus, we're including a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #1,226, 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
- Chevron
- Dock
- Bell
- Pencil
- Poodle
- Wrap
- Mini
- Minion
- Walrus
- Puppet
- Close
- Horseshoe
- Arial
- Stop
- Stooge
- End
We have the Connections categories below, but here's a hint without the actual titles. Try this out:
- 🟨 Yellow: Period
- 🟩 Green: Henchmen
- 🟦 Blue: Face broom
- 🟪 Purple: Dosnuy pepl
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: Finish
- 🟩 Green: Lackey
- 🟦 Blue: Mustaches
- 🟪 Purple: Homophones of Disney characters
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 20 for puzzle #1,226 are a bit easier than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2.6 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
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.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Seethe: Boil, fume, rave, steam
- 🟩 All talk: Blather, gas, hot air, wind
- 🟦 'Mc' things at McDonald's: Flurry, muffin, nuggets, rib
- 🟪 Ending in birds: Alibis, balloon, escrow, mohawk
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #1,226 which had a difficulty rating of 2.3 out of 5.
I've had many a McDonald's breakfast sandwich in my day, yet it still took me an embarrassingly long time to throw muffin into the mix once I saw nuggets, rib, and flurry.
With blue out of the way, I jumped to the easiest category with a quartet of synonyms for when someone's really pissed off: boil, fume, rave, and steam.
I'm no stranger to blustering either, so it was easy enough to spot blather, gas, hot air, and wind for green.
That left purple as today's rote fill with alibis, balloon, escrow, and mohawk.
