Looking for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on October 14 for puzzle #492 are the same difficulty 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, #491, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #492. 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: Football positions
- 🟩 Green: Cable channels
- 🟦 Blue: Fictional clowns
- 🟪 Purple: What "D" might stand for
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: Remember your football positions while flipping channels on the TV before confronting your fear of clowns and wrap it up with some D.
Today's Connections answers
So, what are today's Connections answers for game #492?
Drumroll, please...
- 🟨 Football positions: Center, guard, quarterback, safety
- 🟩 Cable channels: Discovery, History, Nickelodeon, Oxygen
- 🟦 Fictional clowns: Homey, Joker, Pennywise, Ronald
- 🟪 What "D" might stand for: Defense, democrat, dimensional, drive
Some days you just follow the flow.
I got going with Nickelodeon which immediately led to Discovery. I don't know why I know Oxygen is a channel since I've never watched it but I got that one third and wrapped it up with History for TV channels.
From there we were still coming down from the high of the Oregon vs Ohio State game on Saturday and quickly spotted center, guard, quarterback and safety for football positions, three offensive players and one on defense.
Clowns was a quick hit from there where I saw Joker and Pennywise. Then I got Ronald. I vaguely recalled Homey D. Clown but had to look up some In Living Color clips to really remind myself, mostly I just remembered that he was played by Damon Wayans.
And we wrapped it up with D words, Defense, Democrat, Dimensional and Drive.
Yesterday's Connections answers
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #491, which had a difficulty rating of 3.5 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.
Today's puzzle saw another jump in difficulty, which means the pressure was one after solving the easiest category first. I tried to connect Root and Dig with Tree at first, but once I realized that was a red herring, Comb and Sift were the only likely other candidates.
But first I struck out with my first guess, which got three out of four of the blue category answers. I knew it had something to do with hair, but it wasn't until I remembered Pony (tail) that it all fell together with Braid, Bun, and Twist.
After that came green. Roll, Rumble, and Clap were easy enough, but the last one had me digging deep into my library of "vocabulary words I've seen written and vaguely know what they mean" with Peal.
The purple category was surprisingly easy today, though it did have me wondering what Salad could possibly be connected to the whole time I was solving the puzzle. Once it was the only clue left along with Table, Tree, and Book, the wordplay became clear: They're all things with leaves.
