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If you need to get through the haze of today’sConnectionspuzzle, which has a particularly difficult theme, you might want to at these hints and tricks. Today’s puzzle hasfour categories that all are themed exactly the samewith small changes for each of them. While this can make it a little easier if you realize what is happening, it is much harder if you do not. Here are our tips and tricks to help you go into the puzzle with as much knowledge as possible.
If you are looking for a different type of matching game, try theNYT dailyTilespuzzle. There are a lot of ways to make matches in this game, andalmost every tile has several layers that you will have to matchto the layers on other tiles. This can add up to quite a big score if you manage to get a long streak, which is fun to compare to your friends and family if you so choose.
Today’s Connections Category Hints
OCTOBER 23 #500
The big thing with today’s puzzle is the category names, which is always true to some extent. However, often you can get the feel of the category even if you are a little off on what the category is, because the definitions make that more possible. However,today the words are almost completely unrelated in terms of their meanings, and every category works the way the purple category does much more often. To help you figure it out, here are a few hints.
Instead of giving a hint about every category because of the nature of today’s puzzle, we have insteadchosen to give a single hintthat should help you solve it much faster.
Clue:All four category namesfollow the WORD___ pattern for today’s puzzle, which frequent players should be familiar with. The WORD that comes before the blank in each category matches a distinctive feature of the puzzle itself, which can be seen in the appearance of a solvedConnectionspuzzle.
12 Letter Boxed Strategies To Win Quickly
The Letter Boxed game for the New York Times mobile app asks you to connect letters to form words while using various strategies to win quickly.
If that clue felt confusing to you, that confusion should go away uponseeing the category names in the boxes below:
YELLOW ___
GREEN ___
BLUE ___
PURPLE ___
JOURNALISM
PAGES
I thought I was very prepared for this type of category, but I was not sure what I was looking at when I first saw this puzzle. This category did not even make much sense to me, although some of the later ones did. I did have JOURNALISM and PAGES together, but figuring out how to add in the other two was a little harder. I did notcatch onto the overall pattern until after the puzzle was over, even as I was looking for categories that did not end up existing.
SALAD
THUMB
The convoluted ways in which I tried to put these words nearly anywhere else and with any other set of words were probably quite funny for my computer to track. I had GOBLIN with a few other “birds” and SALAD felt like it did not belong anywhere. While I have heard all of these terms, besides the superhero one they are not often used in my everyday speech. I feel like “green SALAD” is a bit much for a name anyway, assalads should probably be green unless specifically indicated otherwise, like a lovely fruit salad.
NYT Mini Crossword: 8 Strategies To Solve It Fast
This tricky little five by five crossword isn’t always as easy as it looks; here are a couple easy tips and tricks to beat your friends' times!
MOON
WHALE
This one had me kicking myself later, as I was even thinking about blue JAYs and blue WHALEs and just did not put the two together for this category. I didfind out that a Whalebird might exist, and that there are a lot of weird-looking birds out there. That being said, I completely missed blue JEANS and blue MOON, which I am sad about as I have studied the moon phases quite a bit more than I probably should have.
PROSE
RAIN
This one is the one I was closest to, except for instead of purple things I believed they were things that had a beat. THUMB was here for a little while, as was JOURNALISM, and I really thought I had figured it out. However, I am suretoday’s theme is partly as a result of it being the 500th puzzle.Milestones can be a large contributing factor to difficulty, so pay attention during these kind of puzzles, as they might prove more challenging than the average one.
Other Games Like Connections
IfConnectionsis at #500,Wordleis well over 1000by now and you can continue your puzzling day by checking that one out as well.
Is It Free To Play?
Wordle(NYT)
Solve a random five-letter word by using color clues.EveryWordleanswercan be found in our daily updated list.
Yes
The Password Game
Create a password in this ever-changing, not-so-simple game. You can find somehelpful tips in ourPassword Gameguide.
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