NYT ‘Connections’ Hints And Answers For Sunday, October 26 (#868)

Looking for a little help with your Sunday Connections puzzle? If you’re in need of some extra clues or answers to today’s NYT Games Connections puzzle, you’ve come to the right place. Below you’ll find an extra set of hints, the categories for each group and, finally, the solution.

Somehow, it’s already the last Sunday of October. In a few days, Halloween will be upon us in all its candied, costumed, horror. It’s getting chillier by the day, and evenings are downright cold lately. Perfect weather for word puzzles and to kick back with a good movie or TV show – which you can find in my latest weekend streaming guide.

Of course, we have some Connections to make, some words to group up, so let’s get cracking!

If you’re looking for Saturday’s Connections guide, it’s right here.

How To Play Connections

Connections is the second-most popular NYT Games puzzle game outside of the main crossword itself, and an extremely fun, free offering that will get your brain moving every day. Play it right here.

The goal is to take a group of 16 words and find links between four pairs of four of them. They could be specific categories of terms, or they could be little world puzzles where words may come before or after them you need to figure out. And they get more complicated from there.

There is only one set of right answers for this, and you only get a certain number of tries so you can’t just spam around until you find something. There are difficulty tiers coded by color, which will usually go from yellow, blue/green to purple as difficulty increases, so know that going in and when you start linking them together.

You pick the four words you think are linked and either you will get a solve and a lit up row that shows you how you were connected. If you’re close, it will tell you that you’re one away. Again, four mistakes you lose, but if you want to know the answers without failing, either come here, or delete your web cookies and try again. If you want to play more puzzles, you can get an NYT Games subscription to access the full archives of all past puzzles.

NYT Connections Hints And Answers – Sunday, October 19

These are the hints that are laid out on the puzzle board itself, but after that, we will get into spoiler territory with some hints and eventually the answers. First, here are today’s Connections words:

• Bee
• Butterfly
• Float
• Sting
• Brass
• Percussion
• String
• Wind
• Beauty
• Popularity
• Staring
• Talent
• Doggy
• Droplet
• Kitchenette
• Starling

Hints for the Connections groups today are:

• 🟡Yellow group – Things you’d find in an orchestra
• 🔵Blue group – Competitive events
• 🟢Green group – Cassius Clay’s famous catchphrase
• 🟣Purple group – Words with a small ending

What Are Today’s Connections Groups?

Alright, the full spoilers follow here as we get into what the groups are today:

• 🟡Yellow group – Kinds of instruments
• 🔵Blue group – Kinds of contests
• 🟢Green group – Words in a famous Muhammad Ali quote
• 🟣Purple group – Words with diminutive suffixes

What Are Today’s Connections Answers?

The full-on answers are below for each group, finally inserting the four words in each category. Spoilers follow if you do not want to get this far. The Connections answers are:

• 🟡Yellow group – Brass, Percussion, String, Wind
• 🔵Blue group – Beauty, Popularity, Staring, Talent
• 🟢Green group – Bee, Butterfly, Float, Sting
• 🟣Purple group – Doggy, Droplet, Kitchenette, Starling

I read all of these over a couple of times and noticed the first red herring was entirely visual: the words Staring, Starling, String and Sting were all placed on the far left side of the grid. It was hard to look away from these, since they all looked and sounded similar, but of course that misdirect was also a clue of a sort. Each of these words belonged in a different group.

Reading over the grid, I found myself hearing the Muhammed Ali quote: “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee” and knew immediately that this would be a group. I was hoping it was the Purple group since the NYT Games App has these new badges, like “Guess all the Purple words first” (see right).

Oh well. Badges? We don’t need no stinkin’ badges.

These words all belonged to the second-hardest group, Green. Next up, I noticed the instruments or rather the types of instruments: Brass, Percussion, String, Wind. These are all sections in an orchestra, which I think would probably make a better category than “kinds of instruments” but that’s neither here nor there.

The various Talent shows and Beauty pageants and Staring contests and Popularity contests were next up, because I still couldn’t make a connection between Doggy, Droplet, Kitchenette and Starling. Those, it turns out, all have “diminutive suffixes” – or endings that imply small things. Not just a drop, a tiny droplet. Not just a dog, a little bitty doggy.

All told, not the hardest Connections ever but that depends a great deal on your Muhammed Ali savvy.

How did you do on today’s Connections? Let me know on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.

Find more guides to Wordle, Strands and the Mini Crossword on my blog where you can also follow me for TV and movie and video game coverage. Read my weekend streaming guide right here.