Looking for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on October 17 for puzzle #494 gets a smidge harder than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 3.3 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, #493, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #494. 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: Grassy area
- 🟩 Green: Deal with
- 🟦 Blue: Movies with "S" removed
- 🟪 Purple: ____ Law
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: Take a sit on some grass, answer some questions, watch a movie and consider legal matters.
Today's Connections answers
So, what are today's Connections answers for game #494?
Drumroll, please...
- 🟨 Grassy area: Green, lawn, park, yard
- 🟩 Deal with: Address, answer, field, handle
- 🟦 Movies with "S" removed: Car, Goodfella, Jaw, Swinger
- 🟪 ____ Law: Criminal, Harvard, lemon, natural
I saw Goodfella and immediately started hunting for other movies. Which led us to Jaw(s) and Car(s), took a second but we found Swinger(s) soon after.
I took a couple strikes on the yellow category because I held on to field for too long. We had yard, lawn and green to start. Ended up swapping green for park but kept field. Strike 2.
To get around that I moved on and saw Harvard and Criminal near each other. This led to law, which helped find lemon and natural.
Which helped me to see address, answer, field and handle for the green category. From there we were able to correct our mistakes on the yellow category.
Yesterday's Connections answers
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #493, which had a difficulty rating of 3.5 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.
I've been reading a lot about the college football playoffs, and playing College Football 25. Tournaments have been on the mind, which led to seeing bracket and seed right away. Round was quickly spotted from there. I debated Bye for Bye Round but nothing else fit, so we got the green category.
Cheerio and Pebble stuck out next, so I was looking for brand names or partial brand names before we got to Flake and Puff. The others are vague enough but Cheerio really stuck out.
Today's purple category has to have the longest description title for a group that I have ever seen in a Connections grid. The title is 9 words long and only three of them are less than four letters. Wild.
Anywho, peace and two stuck out to me. From there I got scissors. Victory was last because I briefly blocked out that people do that to signal victory. It remains terrible.
Yellow became today's rote fill with words that indicate a future point; eventually, later, next soon.
