Looking for clues for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on January 13 for puzzle #582 saw a steep drop in difficulty compared to yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2.6 out of 5.
Every day, we update this article with Connections hints and tips to help you find all 4 of today's answers so you can keep your Connections streak going. And if the clues aren't enough, you'll find all four answers below, with the category titles and the correlating words.
Plus, we're including a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #581, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #582. 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.
Today's Connections words are: Bank, Park, Book, Store, Reserve, Train, School, Pool, Earth, Signal, Inch, Coach, Turn, Glow, Guide, Brake
If you need hints to solve the groupings, then here are the themes of each, based on the order of difficulty:
- 🟨 Yellow: Teach
- 🟩 Green: Cache
- 🟦 Blue: Driving instructor directives
- 🟪 Purple: ___ worm
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: Be sure to tuck away what you've learned and keep an eye out for anything wriggling.
Today's Connections answers
So, what are today's Connections answers for game #582?
Drumroll, please...
- 🟨 Teach: School, Train, Coach, Guide
- 🟩 Cache: Bank, Pool, Reserve, Store
- 🟦 Driving instructor directives: Brake, Park, Signal, Turn
- 🟪 ___ worm: Inch, Glow, Book, Earth
I came out the gate strong today by solving the purple category. I was immediately suspicious of Inch as the only unit of measurement on the board, and once I spotted Glow the idea wormed its way into my head that we may be dealing with, well, worms. Book and Earth rounded out the rest of the category.
Next came yellow with School, Train, Coach, and Guide, all words that are similar enough they were easy to spot from the crowd.
After that came blue with Brake, Park, Signal, and Turn. I thought the category had something to do with cars, but that it was specifically driver instructions went over my head.
That left Green as today's rote fill with Bank, Pool, Reserve, and Store.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Fabrication: Fairy Tale, Fantasy, Fiction, Invention
- 🟩 Woo: Charm, Court, Pursue, Romance
- 🟦 Classic Atari games: Asteroids, Breakout, Centipede, Defender
- 🟪 Things featuring tails: Coin Toss, Comets, Dress Coat, Sonic the Hedgehog
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #581, which had a difficulty rating of 3.8 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.
I grew up in the 64-bit era but snuck in some gaming sessions on my cousin's older systems whenever I could. Several video game titles jumped out at me after I saw Sonic the Hedgehog, but I struck out thinking they were all related. Once I looked a little closer, I realized only certain games shared the same console: Asteroids, Breakout, Centipede and Defender.
Next I struck out on another red herring trying to wrangle up all the bookstore genre sections I could find. When I was only one off, I realized Romance was the outlier and the yellow category finally hit me with Fairy Tale, Fantasy, Fiction, and Invention.
After that, I was on the hunt for where else Romance could fit when I spotted Court, Pursue, and Charm for the green category.
That left purple as today's rote fill, and it might be one of my favorite categories to date because Tails was my favorite character growing up, so I love to see the Connections Crew giving the lil dude a shout-out.
