NYT Connections today hints and answers — Tuesday, November 12 (#520)

NYTimes Connections
(Image credit: Future)

Looking for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on November 12 for puzzle #520 are a tad 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, #519, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.

Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #520. 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: Complain
  • 🟩 Green: Vegetable units
  • 🟦 Blue: RAM, resolution, speed, storage
  • 🟪 Purple: Features of justice personified

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: Eat your vegetables without complaining and check out the best laptops before facing justice.

Today's Connections answers

So, what are today's Connections answers for game #520?

Drumroll, please...

  • 🟨 Complain: Bellyache, carp, crab, grumble
  • 🟩 Vegetable units: Clove, floret, spear, stalk
  • 🟦 Laptop specs: RAM, resolution, speed, storage
  • 🟪 Features of justice personified: Blindfold, robe, scales, sword

Before we begin, I do want to acknowledge that the Tech Guild has ended their strike against the New York Times. As of this writing, I have not seen an announcement about readers returning to the NYT Games but the Strike games website is still live. If you were avoiding the official app or website in support, I think it's safe to return. But do check in with the Tech Guild social media accounts if you're still following and want to know more from them.

We finish today's puzzle via the strike website.

Whenever I see ram in a game I immediately think that they're going for an astrology connection, which is usually correct. Today, it got me.

I didn't see the astrology connection I was looking for but did connect floret, spear and stalk. Took a second to find clove for vegetable "units."

Bellyache and grumble stuck out next, it was guess at crab and I knew carp means to complain but I was flailing there, but it was correct. Seems that this should have been green and not yellow.

I had been eying robe, scales and blindfold so knocking out the first two categories made getting the purple features of justice an easy grab by adding blindfold.

Working for a technology website, I should probably be a bit more embarrassed that I saved laptop specs for last with RAM, resolution, speed and storage. Ouch.

Yesterday's Connections answers

Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #519, which had a difficulty rating of 2.8 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.

Demi threw Alyse for a loop at first, but once she saw Push-Up, she instantly knew what the connection had to be before rounding out the rest of the blue category with Sports and Wireless.

There's plenty of Halloween candy still left over in her house, so it's little wonder why the yellow category came to me next with Crunch, Dove, Mars, and Payday — all confections she doled out by the handful but still managed to barely make a dent in our stock. (Alyse ran out last year and thinks she might have gone a tad overboard this time around.)

She is a huge Greta Gerwig fan, so when she saw Early and Lady were two of the clues left, she was immediately on a hunt for other bird-related words. Big was an easy guess, and I threw in Sue on a lark and ended up solving the purple category.

Green was today's rote fill with Core, Meat, Substance, and Thrust, which gave her enough of an idea to accurately guess the connection.

Scott Younker
West Coast Reporter

Scott Younker is the West Coast Reporter at Tom’s Guide. He covers all the lastest tech news. He’s been involved in tech since 2011 at various outlets and is on an ongoing hunt to build the easiest to use home media system. When not writing about the latest devices, you are more than welcome to discuss board games or disc golf with him.