NYT Connections today hints and answers — Friday, October 11 (#488)

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 #488 take a deep dive in difficulty compared to yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2.4 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, #487, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.

Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #488. 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 : Cherish
• 🟩 Green : Quick jump in the pool
• 🟦 Blue : Additional benefit
• 🟪 Purple : Brashness

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: Get your bonuses in before playing in the pool, consider what you value before getting a bit brash.

Today's Connections answers

So, what are today's Connections answers for game #488?

Drumroll, please...

• 🟨 Cherish: Relish, savor, treasure, value
• 🟩 Quick jump in the pool: Dip, dive, splash, swim
• 🟦 Additional benefit: Bonus, extra, frosting, gravy
• 🟪 Brashness: Brass, cheek, nerve, sauce

We started the day with the yellow category nabbing savor, treasure and value because they were in a diagonal line before moving over to relish.

Took a lazy strike trying to put together a gravy, frosting, sauce, dip category. Ah well.

It did lead us to the green category where we got dip, dive, splash and swim for things you do in a pool.

We saw cheek and nerve from there which led to brass and sauce for brashness. Felt like a bit of a stretch but so it goes today.

Thus, the blue group became the rote fill with bonus, extra, frosting and gravy. A gentle puzzle to lead us into the weekend.

Yesterday's Connections answers

Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #487, which had a difficulty rating of 3.4 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion .

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.