NYT Connections today hints and answers — Wednesday, October 10 (#487)

1. Today's hints

2. Today's answer

3. Yesterday's answer

Looking for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on October 8 for puzzle #487 are minutely harder than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 3.4 out of 5.

Every day, we update this article with Connections hints and tips to help you find all 4 of today's answers. And if the hints aren't enough, you'll find all 4 answers below, with the category titles and the correlating words. Plus, we're including a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #486, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.

Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #487. Only read on if you want to know today's Connections answers.

Alternatively, visit our how to play NYT Connections guide for tips on how to solve the puzzle without our help.

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.

If you need hints to solve the groupings, then here are the themes of each, based on the order of difficulty:

• 🟨 Yellow : Body parts
• 🟩 Green : Cool, in '80s slang
• 🟦 Blue : Movies
• 🟪 Purple : Words in 'Do-Re-Mi'

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: Look for movies before body parts. And then think of ways to say cool before putting the Sound of Music on.

Today's Connections answers

So, what are today's Connections answers for game #487?

Drumroll, please...

• 🟨 Body parts: Arm, eye, hip, leg
• 🟩 Cool, in '80s slang: Bad, fly, ill, rad
• 🟦 Music publications: Big, Elf, Her, Saw
• 🟪 Words in 'Do-Re-Mi': Doe, far, sew, tea

With every word on the grid being three letters it felt harder than I think it probably rates.

I got started by seeing Elf and Saw. Wandered the grid to find Her and then got stuck. I completely forgot about the Tom Hanks classic Big but we eventually got there.

I saw ill and rad near each other and then bad. I wasn't thinking specifically of the 80s so picked hip as words that mean cool. Strike. Quickly swapped out hip for fly to get the green group.

I saw the body parts from jump but didn't trust that it was actually the yellow category. Finally, nabbed it here with arm, eye, hip and leg.

Thus, we get to the Sound of Music and "Do-Re-Mi" featuring doe, far, sew and tea. I don't like this movie and always forget that the song is from there. I think others will make the purple connection much sooner.

Yesterday's Connections answers

Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #486, which had a difficulty rating of 3.2 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion .

I was, perhaps unreasonably, quite disappointed that the Powerpuff Girls grouping was not going to fly in today's puzzle. Instead it was the trap. Blah.

Moving on, we got things going with Bubbles, fizz and foam which were in line on the grid before ending with froth.

It was actually here that I discovered the cartoon trap but with Bubbles gone, we moved on to Pitchfork and Spin. Billboard was a quick find from there. I am not familiar with Mojo, apparently it's a UK magazine that's been running since 1993.

The category title of burgeon for the green group threw me for a loop as I don't think I've ever seen the word without a past participle (-ed) or a gerund (-ing). Has anyone ever said that something was burgeon or will burgeon? It feels wrong, but curious. Anyway, green has blossom, develop, mature, and progress.

Purple was another remove a part of the word to find what we're really looking for category. Another blah. Anyway this one was about setting the table with boiler(plate), butter(cup), jack(knife) and wither(spoon).