Looking for clues to today's Connections answers? Connections' January 11 answers for puzzle #580 are slightly more difficult than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections companion give the difficulty of this puzzle a score of 2.6 out of 5.
Every day we update this article with Connections hints and tips to help you find all four of today's answers so you can keep your Connections streak going. And as if the clues weren't enough, below you'll find all four answers, with the category titles and associated words.
Plus, we're adding a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #579, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #580. Only read on if you want to know today's Connections answers.
You can also check out our NYT Connections guide for tips on how to solve the puzzle without our help.
Today's Connections answer: Tips to help you solve the problem
Unlike our Wordle answer guide today, where we recommend the best Wordle seed words as a strategy, solving compounds relies on identifying compound categories from 16 words. The difficulty of each category is represented by a color; yellow is the easiest grouping and purple is the most challenging. Once you make four mistakes in guessing, the answers are revealed, so hints can be helpful.
Today's Connections words are: Converse, Supreme, Food, Network, Surfing, Kangaroo, Table, Tennis, Matrix, Breaking, Trampoline, Grid, Circulate, Taekwondo, Array and Mingle.
If you need hints to solve the groupings, here are the themes of each group, based on order of difficulty:
- 🟨 Yellow: Display of rows and columns
- 🟩 Vegetable: Things to do at a work event
- 🟦 Blue: Olympic events since 2000
- 🟪 Purple: ____ court
These hints should help you at least part of the way in finding today's Connections answers. If not, you can read on for bigger clues; Or, if you just want to know the answer, scroll further down.
Here's a bigger hint: Go exercise, meet a colleague and enjoy the grids of the track.
Today's Connections answers
What are today's Connections answers for game #580?
Drum roll, please…
- 🟨 Display of rows and columns: Array, grid, matrix, table
- 🟩 Things to do during a work event: Circulate, converse, mingle, network
- 🟦 Olympic events since 2000: Breaking, surfing, taekwondo, trampoline
- 🟪 ____ Court: Food, Kangaroo, Supreme, Tennis
I started today with a strike, seeing taekwondo, trampoline, surfing and tennis as Olympic sports. One way. So I moved on.
So we quickly disabled the yellow category after seeing matrix, grid and table. It took us a while to find Array, but we're here.
I saw kangaroo and immediately thought, “Court.” Looking for a food court, a high court and a tennis court seemed logical to me.
Now I returned to the Olympics and was able to see breaking, which only just became an Olympic sport in the 2024 Summer Games.
Which made networking my last. We had circulating, talking, mixing and networking.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Be dependent (on): Dependent, hinge, trust, rest
- 🟩 “Calm down”: Chill, quiet, enough, relax
- 🟦 Ingredients the old fashioned way: Bitter, orange, rye, sugar
- 🟪 Highlighted in the Monty Hall problem: Car, door, goat, host
Are you reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #579, which had a difficulty rating of 2.3 out of 5, according to the Connections companion.
This writer is based in Los Angeles and it has been a stressful week due to the many fires in the city. So when I saw bitters and rye, I immediately thought of the drink I needed. Led straight to orange and sugar for an old fashioned.
From there we wanted to relax and I took it easy and relaxed. I felt like this group wasn't being worked on enough, but that doesn't apply to any other category.
I saw the yellow category of dependent, hinge, dependent and rest, but was completely unaware of what the purple category could be.
The Monty Hall problem is a probability problem based on three prices doors immediately auto behind one of them and goats behind the others. You choose a door, says No. 1 and the host opens another one, say No. 3. Then the host asks if you want to change your choice. Chances are you actually should. Here it is some reading if you are curious about the problem and the math behind it.
