Looking for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on November 19 for puzzle #527 take a massive leap in difficulty compared to yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 3.7 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 four answers below, with the category titles and the correlating words. Plus, we're including a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #526, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #527. 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: Area of expertise
- 🟩 Green: Ways to unlock a device
- 🟦 Blue: Pasta shapes
- 🟪 Purple: Double ____
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: Concentrate on unlocking your device to find that next pasta recipe while avoiding double trouble.
Today's Connections answers
So, what are today's Connections answers for game #527?
Drumroll, please...
- 🟨 Area of expertise: Concentration, field, focus, specialty
- 🟩 Ways to unlock a device: Face, fingerprint, password, pin
- 🟦 Pasta shapes: Ear, elbow, ribbon, wheel
- 🟪 Double ____: Agent, dribble, jeopardy, standard
Today's puzzle had me thinking, and not just because of the sudden leap in difficulty compared to yesterday's puzzle.
I watched a Hank Green video recently where he worked through Connections and didn't solve until he had an idea of what all four groups were. It made me consider how I solve which is more vibes based and on what comes to me from the Codenames-esque board. In fact, I think my solving style is more akin to finding connections in Codenames. How do you solve?
I was briefly held up by trying to make Wheel and Jeopardy into a game show connection, but it wasn't working. That did lead to fingerprint, password, and pin to start the green category. Face was the wrap up for ways to unlock a device.
The board shifted to have focus and specialty near each other. This revealed to me an expertise group. Field and concentration were quick finds from there.
I got stuck here as I was working through a basketball connection with dribble, wheel and elbow, but had to admit I was overthinking it.
That said, wheel and elbow stuck out to me and I finally, organically, made a pasta noodles connection. For some reason, I rarely remember the various types of pasta shapes. Though I started with a shape of grouping thinking wheel of cheese, ear of corn, ribbon of beef. From there we finally got to pasta.
After that Double agent, double dribble, double jeopardy and double standard became the rote fill. Cute.
Yesterday's Connections answers
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #525, which had a difficulty rating of 2.3 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.
This was Dave's second time doing the Connections guide this week, and he's happy to report that he solved the puzzle successfully. In fact, he only made one mistake in the yellow category. Dave knew it was about hair care, but he got tripped up with "Die" (brain fart thinking it was dye for a moment).
From there, it was smooth sailing through the Monthly Expenses category. The same is mostly true for the "___ Crab" section, as the first three were evident. Dave didn't know about "Spider Crabs," but he took a guess and was right.
Once he had the first three locked down, it only left the final four. He didn't think of "Things With Spots" before grouping the final four, but it matters not because the puzzle was finished, and he was happy.
