Looking for clues for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on January 16 for puzzle #585 take a steep dive in difficulty compared to yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2 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, #584, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #585. 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: Market, Switch, Plant, Mall, Trade, Gym, Outlet, Asset, Rug, Business, Mole, Sconce, Pack, Agent, Baseboard and Commerce.
If you need hints to solve the groupings, then here are the themes of each, based on the order of difficulty:
- 🟨 Yellow: Buying and selling
- 🟩 Green: Installed on a wall
- 🟦 Blue: Spy
- 🟪 Purple: ____ Rat
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: Look out for rats and spies as you renovate your place at the market.
Today's Connections answers
So, what are today's Connections answers for game #585?
Drumroll, please...
- 🟨 Buying and selling: Business, commerce, market, trade
- 🟩 Installed on a wall: Baseboard, outlet, sconce, switch
- 🟦 Spy: Agent, asset, mole, plant
- 🟪 ____ Rat: Gym, mall, pack, rug
Since today was a two I tried to knock out the purple category first and ended up grabbing blue first instead, whoops.
Agent, asset, mole and plant stuck out to me as spycraft. Made me want to watch some James Bond.
Redeemed myself with purple second when I figured out the green category and saw rug by itself. For some reason the cartoon rug rats popped into my mind. Quickly moved over to pack (rat) which lead to gym (rat) and ended with mall (rat), a Kevin Smith movie that mostly holds up, kinda.
Then we snagged the green categories and baseboard, outlet, sconce and switch which are all installed on walls.
And I ended with business, commerce, market and trade which I thought would be titled retail, but buying and selling works as well.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Means: Mechanism, Medium, Tool, Vehicle
- 🟩 Lacking: Light, low, short, shy
- 🟦 Martini specifications: Dirty, dry, perfect, wet
- 🟪 Fictional Misters: Big, peanut, robot, toad
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #584, which had a difficulty rating of 4 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.
The 4 rated difficulty got me today, I started the puzzle and saw dirty and dry, immediately thought martini. Wet was next. It took a second to recall Perfect mostly because that recipe is just what I think of as a martini.
After that I was drawing blanks. I stepped away for a bit to see if it would help, which it did a bit.
When I came back to the puzzle, I saw light, low and short. That led to the lacking category mentally which got me to shy.
The thinking was still slow today but I finally sussed out mechanism, tool and vehicle. I wasn't sure on medium but it didn't seem to fit with what was left.
And we wrapped it up with misters, Mr. Big (Sex and the City), Mr. Peanut (snack mascot), Mr. Robot (the show), and Mr. Toad (of the wild ride).
