Looking for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on October 24 for puzzle #501 are much harder than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 3.5 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, #500, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #501. 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: Lineup
- 🟩 Green: NYT offerings
- 🟦 Blue: Things made by folding paper
- 🟪 Purple: French words
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: Consider the table of contents on the NY Times, fold up some origami, practice your French and check out the program.
Today's Connections answers
So, what are today's Connections answers for game #501?
Drumroll, please...
- 🟨 Lineup: Bill, program, schedule, slate
- 🟩 NYT offerings: Audio, cooking, games, news
- 🟦 Things made by folding paper: Airplane, crane, fan, fortune teller
- 🟪 French words: Adieu, belle, pain, temps
The 500th puzzle was cute and clever. The 501st? A slog.
I saw the purple category right away with adieu, belle and temps, but could not for the life of me remember any other French words that connected. So, we moved on.
The first completed grouping was yellow as we put together slate, program, and schedule before finding bill.
Airplane and crane clued us into the folding idea of blue. Fan was easy enough and it took a moment to remember the fortune teller. Do kids still make the fortune tellers? I hope so.
I also saw the newspaper clue and had News, cooking and games right away but was leery of audio until this point. I don't believe audio is a false cognate in French, but pain is.
I had totally spaced that pain is the French word for bread, annoying since it is similar to pan in Spanish, which I am currently teaching myself.
Anyway, the French words were Adieu, belle, pain and temps (which means weather, though I think it has other meanings as well).
Today's was a puzzle where I always felt one off from the correct answer. So it goes.
Yesterday's Connections answers
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #500, which had a difficulty rating of 2.8 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.
Welcome to puzzle #500 for Connections. It's not been around as long as some, Wordle is well in to the 1200s, but it's still impressive to get here.
So, how did the Connections Crew treat us for getting to number 500?They got cute and clever.
I believe that some people will see this puzzle and be done with it as fast as they can tap the words. For others, it will be a struggle until something clicks for you.
I found myself in the latter camp staring blankly at the puzzle until, for unknown reasons, green beret came to mind and suddenly I was off to the races. From there we had Green Goblin (for me, of Spiderman fame), green salad and green thumb.
After that, we went to yellow for yellow cab, yellow jacket, yellow journalism (most headlines these days), and yellow pages, which still exists.
It was coinflip here but I saw Purple Haze first and followed up with purple prose, Purple Rain and purple heart. With two song references (Jimi Hendrix's Haze and Prince's Rain), I can see why this was considered the harder of the last two groupings. Though, they are fairly famous singles.
Finally, we wrapped it up with blue jay, blue jeans, blue moon and blue whale.
Like I said, a very cute puzzle that was an enjoyable solve once it clicked.
Here's to 500 more.
