1. Today's hints
2. Today's answer
3. Yesterday's answer
Looking for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on October 12 for puzzle #489 has the exact same difficulty as 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, #488, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #489. 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 : Draped accessories
- 🟩 Green : Tolerate
- 🟦 Blue : Bird onomatopoeia
- 🟪 Purple : Starts of cell phone makers
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: It's a bit warm for a scarf but never too much to get some birding in while tolerating your phone.
Today's Connections answers
So, what are today's Connections answers for game #489?
Drumroll, please...
- 🟨 Draped accessories: Scarf, shawl, stole, wrap
- 🟩 Tolerate: Bear, stand, swallow, take
- 🟦 Bird onomatopoeia: Coo, gobble, honk, hoot
- 🟪 Starts of cell phone makers: App, goo, motor, sam
This warm Saturday got off to an audubon start with gobble and honk. I saw coo and hoot soon after for bird noise onomatopoeia.
Things got a bit wintry with scarf, shawl and wrap. It took a moment to remember that a stole is basically a poncho without the hood, or that's how I think of it.
Swallow and take clicked for me which made it quick work to snag bear and stand for tolerance.
I don't think I've ever audibly reacted to a purple category like I did with today's. As soon as the category title popped up and looking at the words App(le), Goo(gle), Motor(ola), and Sam(sung).
I actually said out loud, "Gross."
Needless to say, but I hated that grouping and title. The removing of letters or halves of words or phrases for purple groupings remains the worst type of category.
Yesterday's Connections answers
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #488, which had a difficulty rating of 2.4 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion .
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.
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