Today’s Connections Hints & Answers For October 13, 2024 (Puzzle #489)

As you dig your claws into today’s Connections puzzle, you might run into a stumbling block or find that you are struggling to complete the puzzle. Today’s puzzle has an assortment of words that can be mistaken for something else, making it easy to make false guesses. This can lead to frustration and potentially losing the game if you get stuck on a particular set of words. With this guide, you can move past that frustration and continue onward toward victory.

If you enjoy playing daily puzzles, the NYT Vertex puzzle can become part of that routine. The Vertex puzzle is also about making connections, but in this case, it is more about physical ones, as you draw lines between the dots to make shapes of color. Once all of them have been connected, you will end up with a very aesthetically pleasing picture that makes you feel very satisfied at the end.

Today’s Connections Category Hints

OCTOBER 13 #489

When figuring out the categories, ensuring you have separated out the right words is the biggest challenge. If you have created a category that does not exist in the puzzle, finishing the puzzle will be much harder. In today’s puzzle, there are some words that do not look like they quite go together, but there is more to them than meets the eye, and figuring out what that is will help you solve the puzzle.

• One category is about things all made from the same substance.
• One category is about common things seen on a popular TV show.
• One category is about different kinds of the same clothing.
• One category is about four words that all share a common word in a phrase.

If you put all those clues together and still need a bit of a nudge, you can use the following spoilers to help you out. The first are all the category names, followed by all the answers for each one.

Today’s Connections Answers

OCTOBER 13 #489

Yellow Answers: Revealed & Explained

In this category, there are what seem to be very unrelated words. CLAW and HOOF can seem very similar at first glance. NAIL looks like it might go with ANVIL and HAMMER as a tool-based category. However, there are not many other words that would go in the same group, and that could make you think about NAIL as a fingernail and not a tool. HORN is a bit different, but putting the other three together might help you figure out that it is also made of hair.

Green Answers: Revealed & Explained

This is the category I got stuck on for too many guesses. From COYOTE and TNT, I knew it had to do with the Road Runner cartoons, but figuring out which other words belonged was a little harder. I had BOULDER down as the third word and felt pretty good about that. Unfortunately, the last word was a bit harder. I thought HAMMER and ANVIL were both options, but I picked the wrong one first. I was so confident that I had the right category, but I was unable to follow up and put it together.

Blue Answers: Revealed & Explained

I had a pretty good sense that there were different types of pants in the category, but my fashion sense was not as good as my other skills. I was confident with CAPRI and CARGO, but I had no idea that HAMMER and STIRRUP were also types of pants. In this case, knowing the category didn’t help me, and I struggled to find the other words to fill up this category. STIRRUP, at least, I would have assumed, was connected to clothing or accessories in the horse sense, but HAMMER did not make sense to me.

Purple Answers: Revealed & Explained

By the time I got to this category, I had already made too many wrong guesses. At one point, I thought DRUM might belong with the other cartoon words, but I did not have any idea what might connect the other three words. Sometimes, this is a big clue that they might go together, but I did not get the chance to act on that information. Sometimes, you have a run of bad luck with a puzzle, and that was my experience today.

Other Games Like Connections

If you still need extra puzzles today, check out one of the following puzzles. There are many good choices below, but I personally like trying out Worldle every day.