Looking for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on October 13 for puzzle #490 are a little harder than 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 4 answers below, with the category titles and the correlating words. Plus, we're including a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #489, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #490. 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: Made of keratin
- 🟩 Green: Road runner cartoon staples
- 🟦 Blue: Kind of pants
- 🟪 Purple: ____ roll
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: Think back to your childhood science class and the shows you may have watched back then. If you remember fashion trends of the past few decades, you'll be on a roll.
Today's Connections answers
So, what are today's Connections answers for game #490?
Drumroll, please...
- 🟨 Made of keratin: Claw, hoof, horn, nail
- 🟩 Road runner cartoon staples: Anvil, boulder, coyote, TNT
- 🟦 Kinds of pants: Capri, cargo, hammer, stirrup
- 🟪 ___ roll: California, drum, egg, honor
After the puzzle's difficulty score plateaued for the last few days, Sunday's puzzle jumped up a bit, and it shows. I started off by getting the easiest category out of the way with what I thought were all animal body parts, Claw, Hoof, Horn, and Nail, not realizing that they share another thing on common too: all being made of keratin.
Next came the blue category, which stumped me for a bit. After striking out twice, I realized (MC) Hammer pants was the one pair I was missing alongside Capri, Cargo, and Stirrup.
After that was the green category. I've been watching a lot of cartoons on Disney Plus lately, so it wasn't too difficult to pick up that Anvil, Boulder, Coyote, and TNT were all mainstays of those old road runner Looney Tunes.
That made purple today's rote fill, which was lucky for me because I didn't have a clue what California, Drum, Egg, and Honor all had in common. The wordplay or missing letter ones always stump me.
Yesterday's Connections answers
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #489, which had a difficulty rating of 2.4 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.
This warm Saturday got off to an Audubon start with gobble and honk. I saw coo and hoot soon after for bird noise onomatopoeia.
Things got a bit wintry with scarf, shawl and wrap. It took a moment to remember that a stole is basically a poncho without the hood, or that's how I think of it.
Swallow and take clicked for me which made it quick work to snag bear and stand for tolerance.
I don't think I've ever audibly reacted to a purple category like I did with today's. As soon as the category title popped up, while looking at the words App(le), Goo(gle), Motor(ola), and Sam(sung), I actually said out loud, "Gross."
Needless to say, but I hated that grouping and title. The removing of letters or halves of words or phrases for purple groupings remains the worst type of category.
