NYT Connections Today Hints and Answers Sunday October 20 (#497)

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1. Today's tips

2. Today's answer

3. Yesterday's answer

Looking for today's Connections answers? Connections' October 20 answers for puzzle #497 are a bit easier than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections companion Rate the difficulty of this puzzle at 2 out of 5.

Every day we update this article with hints and tips from Connections, so you can find all four of today's answers. And if the tips aren'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, #496, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.

Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #497. 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 answers hints to help you solve the problem

Unlike our guide to today's Wordle answer, where we have the best Wordle starter words As a strategy, solving Connections relies on identifying connecting 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.

If you need hints to solve the groupings, here are the themes of each group, based on order of difficulty:

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: Think back to the heady days of elementary school writing classes, gym class, and School House Rock to solve today's puzzle.

Today's Connections answers

What are today's Connections answers for game #497?

Drum roll, please…

• Piece of newspaper writing: Article, column, feature, story

• Noisy nuisance: Clash, racket, fight, ruckus

• Table tennis needs: Ball, net, paddle, table

• Homophones of coordinating conjunctions: Ass, front, oar, screw

Today might be the record for how quickly I could solve a category. Once I saw Article and Column, it took a matter of seconds for Feature and Story to come to me, rounding out today's yellow category.

I once tried to connect all the sports-related words I saw before I came across Clatter and Ruckus. Row came to me a little later, but it took longer than I care to admit to remember that Racket had more than one meaning.

With green out of the way, blue came with ball, net, paddle and table, all the essential equipment you need for a game of ping pong.

That left the purple category, which you might need a dictionary to parse today. At the very least you will think back to Schoolhouse Rock (conjunction node, what is that function ~). Ok, explain: which of the English majors on the Connections Crew came up with this one?

Yesterday's Connections answers

Are you reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #496, which had a difficulty rating of 2.5 out of 5, according to the Connections companion.

For me, the purple category has to be one of the easiest I've yet encountered while playing Connections.

I saw Metroid first, but it was a quick run to grab Halo, Civilization, and Madden. I have reviewed the current one Madden 25 and I'm unreasonably hyped for it Civilization 7 coming next year. Video games are on the mind.

Okay, when I put the controller down, I saw candle and incense when I first opened the puzzle and had a category in mind around a relaxing bath. So adding lotion and soap to that list was a nice addition.

The last two were a coin toss, but inspiring, inciting and provoking were on top of each other, so grabbing yellow made it a fast group.

Which left the stings of the blue category, emotional and physical, with insults, jellyfish, nettles and wasps.