Looking for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on November 20 for puzzle #528 scales down the difficulty compared to yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2.8 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, #527, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #528. 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: Sounds like a dog
- 🟩 Green: Broadcast, as online media
- 🟦 Blue: Cocktail-making verbs
- 🟪 Purple: Organizational structures, metaphorically
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: Practice your inner dog, don't put it on Twitch while making a cocktail and make you're way up the corporate structure.
Today's Connections answers
So, what are today's Connections answers for game #528?
Drumroll, please...
- 🟨 Sound like a dog: Bark, bay, howl, snarl
- 🟩 Broadcast, as online media: Air, play, run, stream
- 🟦 Cocktail-making verbs: Garnish, muddle, stir, strain
- 🟪 Organizational structures, metaphorically: Chain, ladder, pyramid, tree
After yesterday's brief existential crisis, I decided to tackle today by solving the puzzle before hitting the words. Here's how we got there.
At first glance, I saw snarl and howl. Immediately thought wolf sounds, followed by bark and bay. That's the yellow set.
Stream and play stuck out to me next, run and air were natural finds for a budding broadcasting theme. Thus we had green.
I was focused on solving blue next to go down the line. Garnish and stir leaped out to me as part of making a cocktail. Muddle and strain were the only things that made sense from there. Check blue.
Which left the final four words: chain, ladder, pyramid and tree. In my mind they were corporate structure speak, which is close enough to organizational structures.
It was fun to try and solve without clicking, but it helped that today's puzzle was easier than yesterday's.
Yesterday's Connections answers
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #527, which had a difficulty rating of 3.7 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.
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.
