Today’s NYT Connections Hints (and Answer) for Tuesday, October 3, 2023

If you’re looking for the Connections answer for Tuesday, October 3, 2023, read on—I’ll share some clues, tips, and strategies, and finally the solutions to all four categories. Beware, there are spoilers below for October 3, NYT Connections #114! Read on if you want some hints (and then the answer) to today’s Connections game. By the way, we’ve moved the basic “how to play” instructions to the very end of the page—just a heads up in case you’re used to scrolling down a few screens when you open this post.

If you want an easy way to come back to our Connections hints every day, bookmark this page. You can also find our past hints there as well, in case you want to know what you missed in a previous puzzle.

Below, I’ll give you some oblique hints at today’s Connections answers. And further down the page, I’ll reveal the themes and the answers. Scroll slowly and take just the hints you need!

Does today’s Connections game require any special knowledge?

There are some not-too-obscure fashion brands and animal species in today’s puzzle. Here are a few definitions of lesser-known words in today’s puzzle.

• To JABBER is to BLATHER on.
• An AFGHAN is either a knitted or crocheted blanket, or a long-haired dog.
• ANGORA refers to the hair of an Angora rabbit, or to the Angora goat, which provides the fiber known as mohair. (Angora is an older spelling of Ankara, the city in Türkiye.)

Hints for the themes in today’s Connections puzzle

Here are some spoiler-free hints for the groupings in today’s Connections:

• Yellow category – So soft.
• Green category – Full of hot air.
• Blue category – Underfoot.
• Purple category – Also, potentially, full of hot air.

Does today’s Connections game involve any wordplay?

Nothing too tricky, just a fill-in-the-blank for the purple category.

Ready to hear the answers? Keep scrolling if you want a little more help.

BEWARE: Spoilers follow for today’s Connections puzzle!

We’re about to give away some of the answers. Scroll slowly if you don’t want the whole thing spoiled. (The full solution is a bit further down.)

What are the ambiguous words in today’s Connections?

• An AFGHAN can be, as we mentioned, a blanket, a dog, or a person or thing from Afghanistan. Today it goes with the animals.
• A YAK is either a long-haired mountain bovine, or a synonym for BLATHER. Again: think animals.
• A PUMA, however, is not an animal today.
• LEAD can relate to being in front of something (leading a horse, leading the pack in a race) but here we’re pronouncing it the other way, like the material. Think of lead shot, or leaded gasoline.

What are the categories in today’s Connections?

• Yellow: LONG-HAIRED ANIMALS
• Green: PRATTLE ON
• Blue: SNEAKER BRANDS
• Purple: ____ BALLOON

DOUBLE BEWARE: THE SOLUTION IS BELOW

Ready to learn the answers to today’s Connections puzzle? I give them all away below.

What are the yellow words in today’s Connections?

The yellow grouping is considered to be the most straightforward. The theme for today’s yellow group is LONG-HAIRED ANIMALS and the words are: AFGHAN, ALPACA, ANGORA, YAK.

What are the green words in today’s Connections?

The green grouping is supposed to be the second-easiest. The theme for today’s green category is PRATTLE ON and the words are: BLATHER, CHAT, JABBER, GAB.

What are the blue words in today’s Connections?

The blue grouping is the second-hardest. The theme for today’s blue category is SNEAKER BRANDS and the words are: CONVERSE, JORDAN, PUMA, VANS.

What are the purple words in today’s Connections?

The purple grouping is considered to be the hardest. The theme for today’s purple category is ____ BALLOON and the words are: LEAD, SPEECH, TRIAL, WATER. Fun fact: the band Led Zeppelin reportedly chose their name after a comment that they might go down like a lead balloon. They spelled “lead” phonetically to avoid confusion.

How I solved today’s Connections

I saw the animals first—PUMA, ANGORA, YAK, ALPACA—but then second-guessed myself. YAK must go with JABBER, GAB, and BLATHER. That was a miss, so I swapped out YAK for the next best thing, and got that grouping with CHAT instead. (SPEECH just didn’t seem to fit.)

The animals still didn’t quite make sense. If ANGORA, ALPACA, and YAK are all mountain animals, then PUMA might go with them; but I also really wanted PUMA to be a shoe, so I decided to wait. I looked at the remaining words for potential fill-in-the-blanks. At first I thought maybe “hold WATER” and “hold TRIAL” before realizing that I had WATER, TRIAL, LEAD, and SPEECH balloons. So that went next.

At this point I was ready to submit the shoe brands. VANS, plural, has to refer to the shoes. And while I’d colloquially call the others “Jordans” or “Pumas,” the puzzle is using the official brand name of each. Vans (TM) is plural, the others are not. That was a hit.

That led me back to the animals: ANGORA goats or rabbits, ALPACAs, and YAKs all have long hair. An AFGHAN is a blanket—unless they mean an AFGHAN hound. It doesn’t feel fair to use the partial name, but here we are. Puzzle solved.

Connections 
Puzzle #114
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How to play Connections

I have a full guide to playing Connections, but here’s a refresher on the rules:

First, find the Connections game either on the New York Times website or in their Crossword app. You’ll see a game board with 16 tiles, each with one word or phrase. Your job is to select a group of four tiles that have something in common. Often they are all the same type of thing (for example: RAIN, SLEET, HAIL, and SNOW are all types of wet weather) but sometimes there is wordplay involved (for example, BUCKET, GUEST, TOP TEN, and WISH are all types of lists: bucket list, guest list, and so on).

Select four items and hit the Submit button. If you guessed correctly, the category and color will be revealed. (Yellow is easiest, followed by green, then blue, then purple.) If your guess was incorrect, you’ll get a chance to try again.

You win when you’ve correctly identified all four groups. But if you make four mistakes before you finish, the game ends and the answers are revealed.

How to win Connections

The most important thing to know to win Connections is that the groupings are designed to be tricky. Expect to see overlapping groups. For example, one puzzle seemed to include six breakfast foods: BACON, EGG, PANCAKE, OMELET, WAFFLE, and CEREAL. But BACON turned out to be part of a group of painters along with CLOSE, MUNCH, and WHISTLER, and EGG was in a group of things that come by the dozen (along with JUROR, ROSE, and MONTH). So don’t hit “submit” until you’ve confirmed that your group of four contains only those four things.

If you’re stuck, another strategy is to look at the words that seem to have no connection to the others. If all that comes to mind when you see WHISTLER is the painting nicknamed “Whistler’s Mother,” you might be on to something. When I solved that one, I ended up googling whether there was a painter named Close, because Close didn’t fit any of the obvious themes, either.

Another way to win when you’re stuck is, obviously, to read a few helpful hints–which is why we share these pointers every day. Check back tomorrow for the next puzzle!