Looking for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on November 23 for puzzle #531 gets a tad harder than to yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 3 out of 5.
Every day, we update this article with Connections hints and tips to help you find all 4 of today's answers. And if the hints 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, #530, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #531. 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.
If you need hints to solve the groupings, then here are the themes of each, based on the order of difficulty:
- 🟨 Yellow: Telling of events
- 🟩 Green: Secreted by trees
- 🟦 Blue: Things on sticks
- 🟪 Purple: Black or red
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: Tell a story, be careful of stick trees, check your sticks and bet on red.
Today's Connections answers
So, what are today's Connections answers for game #531?
Drumroll, please...
- 🟨 Telling of events: Account, chronicle, description, story
- 🟩 Secreted by trees: Gum, latex, resin, sap
- 🟦 Things on sticks: Ball-in-cup, corn dog, cotton swab, lollipop
- 🟪 Black or red: Balance sheet, Checkers, licorice, roulette
Y'all today was rough for me. I took three strikes nearly right away and was hanging by my fingernails with the last strike through finishing the puzzle. Usually I use strikes as a way to test out wilder groupings or when I'm stubbornly forcing a category.
Today, I was forcing a dentistry category and remain annoyed at the lack of one.
Outside of that, I knocked the yellow out with account, chronicle, description and story. Then I took three straight strikes forcing the dentist group.
Eventually, I got to what I thought was a gooey category with gum, latex, resin and sap. I had forgotten that latex comes from trees. Ah well.
Briefly, I was hunting for a games group with checkers, ball-in-cup and roulette. That didn't work but it did lead me to the purple category where I was looking at things that were black.
Thus, checkers, licorice, roulette and balance sheet.
And we wrapped this up with things on sticks; ball-in-cup, corn dog, cotton swab, lollipop.
A sigh of relief and a visit to the mental factory to see why things weren't clicking.
Yesterday's Connections answers
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #530, which had a difficulty rating of 2.8 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.
I never know if other people's grids look the same as mine does. I say this because my method is to take in the first row and then wander around the rest of the puzzle seeing what leaps out to me.
Fantasy was in the first slot and as I looked around the grid treasure jumped out to me and I was off to the islands. Love (Island) was also in the first row. It took a moment to find the last, but shutter was hiding in the second row for me.
From there we immediately hit the blue category of work communication platforms. I start the day with a Google Meet listen and use Slack daily. Zoom, of course, and then there's Microsoft's Teams, which I've never met anyone who actually uses. Is it good?
And here I got stuck because of my own mental thinking. I was on a camera kick and tried to put together something with exposure, lens, angle and perspective. Nope, that's a strike. It did mean I was one off of the point of view which I eventually got to by swapping exposure out for position. To be fair, I should have known better since Shutter was already taken in the Island category. No seeing the trap for me.
Which left the yellow category as the final one for me. Publicity had attention, coverage, exposure and press.
