Looking for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on October 8 for puzzle #486 are a littel bit harder than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 3.3 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, #485, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #486. 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: Effervescence
- 🟩 Green: Burgeon
- 🟦 Blue: Music publications
- 🟪 Purple: Ending with tableware
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: Ignore the Powerpuff Girls. After that pop some bubbly, read some magazines and look through your cupboard.
Today's Connections answers
So, what are today's Connections answers for game #486?
Drumroll, please...
- 🟨 Effervescence: Bubbles, fizz, foam, froth
- 🟩 Prohibit: Ban, block, deny, forbid
- 🟦 Music publications: Billboard, Mojo, Pitchford, Spin
- 🟪 Ending with tableware: Boilerplate, buttercup, jackknife, witherspoon
I was, perhaps unreasonably, quite disappointed that the Powerpuff Girls grouping was not going to fly in today's puzzle. Instead it was the trap. Blah.
Moving on, we got things going with Bubbles, fizz and foam which were in line on the grid before ending with froth.
It was actually here that I discovered the cartoon trap but with Bubbles gone, we moved on to Pitchfork and Spin. Billboard was a quick find from there. I am not familiar with Mojo, apparently it's a UK magazine that's been running since 1993.
The category title of burgeon for the green group threw me for a loop as I don't think I've ever seen the word without a past participle (-ed) or a gerund (-ing). Has anyone ever said that something was burgeon or will burgeon? It feels wrong, but curious. Anyway, green has blossom, develop, mature, and progress.
Purple was another remove a part of the word to find what we're really looking for category. Another blah. Anyway this one was about setting the table with boiler(plate), butter(cup), jack(knife) and wither(spoon).
Yesterday's Connections answers
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #484, which had a difficulty rating of 3.2 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.
Of course, Halloween is on the mind, so today was got off to a cute start with bat, pumpkin, spider and witch for the yellow group.
I purposely tried to go down the line and ban, block, deny and forbid stuck out as about as easy as the yellow category. Though I did take a strike trying bar.
From here I got a little stuck because I don't read music and had no idea that accidental is apparently a symbol or type of symbol you can see on sheet music. So, I wasn't sure where it fit and assumed it was purple.
Which led me to the Purple category and candy apple, candy bar, candy cane and candy corn.
Blue for music was accidental, note, rest and staff. Learned something but I'm not sure it'll be top of mind on future sheet music clues.
