Looking for Thursday’s Connections tips and answers instead? You can find them here:

ForbesToday’s NYT “Connections” tips and answers for October 24th (#501)From Kris Holt

Hello everyone! Happy Friday. The weekend is just around the corner and no matter where you are in the world, I hope you’re making the most of it. When the weather turned unexpectedly warm this week, I was hoping to swim in the off-season, but the building management had already closed the outdoor pool. Too bad.

At least today NYT Connections Hints and answers for Friday, October 25th will follow soon.

How to play connections

Connections is a free, popular one New York Times daily pun. You will receive a new puzzle every day at midnight. You can play on that NYT Website or gaming app.

You will be presented with a grid of 16 words. Your task is to divide them into four groups of four by figuring out the connections between them. The groups can be items you can click on, names of research participants, or words preceded by a body part.

Each puzzle has only one solution and you need to be careful when it comes to words that could fit into more than one category. You can mix up the words to perhaps better see the connections between them.

Each group is color coded. The yellow group is usually the easiest to understand, blue and green are in the middle, and the purple group is usually the most difficult. The purple group often contains puns.

Select four words that you think go together and click Send. If you guess and are wrong, you lose a life. When you’re close to finding the right group, you may see a message saying you’re one word away from the right group, but you still need to figure out which word to swap.

If you make four mistakes, the game is over. Let’s make sure that this doesn’t happen with the help of some tips, and if you really find it difficult, even with today’s ones Connections Answer. Like with Wordle and other similar games, it’s easy to share results with your friends on social media and group chats.

If you have one NYT You can access this with an All Access or Games subscription Connections Archive. This includes every previous game from Connectionsso you can go back and play any songs you missed.

Aside from the first 60 or so games, you should be able to find my clues for each grid via Google if you need to! Simply click here and enter the date of the game you need clues or answers for in the search bar.

What are today’s connection notes?

Scroll slowly! Right after the clues for each of today’s Connections Groups, I will reveal what the groups are without immediately telling you what words appear in them.

Today’s 16 words are…

• FORMALLY
• COOKWARE
• QUESTION MARK
• RAVE
• PERIOD
• THUMBS UP
• BALL
• POINT
• BAD RATING
• HOP
• EXCLAMATION
• POINTS
• SATYR
• POINT
• CAMERA MOVEMENT
• HEART
• TITLE

And the clues for today’s groups are:

• Yellow group – circular markers
• Green Group – Boogie all night long
• Blue Group – quick replies to messages
• Purple group – PETER and LABYRINTH would have fit here

What are today’s sorority groups?

Do you need additional help?

Be warned: We’re starting to get into this Spoiler territory.

Today’s groups are…

• Yellow group — •
• Green group – event with dance
• Blue Group – iPhone Messages Tapback Replies
• Purple Group – “Pan”

What are today’s connection solutions?

Spoiler alert! Don’t scroll any further down the page until you’re ready to find out today Connections Answer.

This is your final warning!

Today Connections Answers are…

• Yellow Group – • (DOT, DOT, DOT, TITTLE)
• Green group – event with dance (BALL, FORMAL, HOP, RAVE)
• Blue Group – iPhone Message Tapback Replies (EXCLAMATION POINTS, HEART, QUESTION MARKS, THUMBS UP)
• Purple Group – “Pan” (BAD REVIEW, CAMERA MOVEMENT, COOKWARE, SATYR)

In my opinion, it was the start of an epic new series after two perfect games that almost brought it to a halt. But I secured my third win in a row. This is what happened to me:

🟩🟦🟪🟦

🟦🟨🟦🟨

🟩🟨🟨🟨

🟨🟨🟨🟨

🟩🟩🟩🟩

🟦🟦🟦🟦

🟪🟪🟪🟪

Quite a headache today!

I thought I was clever when I noticed that the grid contained the plural of exclamation points, while the other punctuation-related words were singular. So I tried to guess this: RAVE, THUMBS UP and BAD REVIEW because I thought they would be used in the review, but I didn’t even get the “one away” message. Damned.

But then there was something else another Twist. Exclamation marks, periods, question marks and titles (the small dot above “i” and “j”) also did not form a group. I wasn’t “one away from a group” either.

Finally I got this message with an estimate of TITTLE, POINT, BALL and DOT before realizing I had to swap BALL for PERIOD against the yellows. Hey, I have a group!

It’s been a long time since I’ve heard HOP used in reference to an event that involves dancing, but it finally clicked on the greens. Two groups!

As it turns out, my suspicions were right, but in the wrong way. The smaller grid made it easier to see the connection between THUMBS UP and HEART, like quick replies to messages. It took me a second to realize what the fourth word was, but after searching for an emoji-like noun, I deduced it. (Sorry, Android users.)

This meant that the purples were in for a tired victory. I probably should have figured out this connection, but alas.

In case you’re wondering, tapbacks is the term Apple uses for the little emoji responses that appear when you hold your finger over text in the Messages app. This used to be limited to a small number of symbols, but after a recent iPhone, iPad and Mac update, you can now respond with any emoji you want. (Can you tell I spend most of my day writing about technology?)

That’s all for today Connections Hints and answers. Be sure to check out my blog for tips and the solution for Saturday’s game if you need them.

PS: There’s really only one movie I can recommend today based on the “Pan” reference. Pan’s Labyrinth features a faun rather than a SATYR and doesn’t quite fit this month’s horror theme as it’s more of a dark fantasy film, but it’s absolutely amazing. I haven’t seen it in a long time (I should change that), but it’s easily one of the best films of the 21st century so far:

If you feel like it, please do it Follow my blog for more coverage of Connections and other puns and occasionally even some words about video games. It helps me a lot!