NYT Connections hints and solutions for Thursday, November 13 (sport #886)

Good morning! Let’s play Connections, the NYT’s intelligent phrase sport that challenges you to group solutions in numerous classes. It may be robust, so learn on for those who want Connections hints.

NYT Connections today (game #886) – hint #1 – group hints

What are some clues for today’s NYT Connections groups?

YELLOW: Clothing
GREEN: Bubbles in common
BLUE: A layer for improvement
PURPLE: Add a workplace “word”

Need more clues?

We’re firmly in spoiler territory now, but read on if you want to know what the four theme answers are for today’s NYT Connections puzzles…

NYT Connections today (game #886) – the answers

NYT Connections answers for game 886 on a purple background — (Image credit: New York Times)

The answers to today’s Connections, game #886, are…

YELLOW: ATTIRE DUDS, FIT, GETUP, THREADS
GREEN: FOAMY THINGS BEER, FIRE EXTINGUISHER, SEA, SHAVING CREAM
BLUE: THINGS THAT USE FILTERS AIR PURIFIER, CIGARETTE, COFFEE MAKER, INSTAGRAM
PURPLE: _____ OFFICE BOX, MICROSOFT, OVAL, POST

My rating: Hard
My score: 1 mistake

A surprisingly enjoyable game, but one that tested my patience.

This was a round that contained a couple of pairs. Social media apps INSTAGRAM and THREADS jumped out immediately, but I resisted cobbling together a group from those. More esoterically, I considered DUDS and COFFEE MAKER being linked by milk.

Thankfully, after remembering that DUDS is old English slang for clothes, I found all four tiles in ATTIRE – particularly tricky to be the easiest/yellow group – and then saw the link between CIGARETTES, INSTAGRAM, AIR PURIFIER, and COFFEE MAKER.

With eight tiles left I took a wild guess at four random words and after getting a “one away” pop-up saw that the link was the word OFFICE. Phew!

NYT Connections is one of several increasingly popular word games made by the New York Times. It challenges you to find groups of four items that share something in common, and each group has a different difficulty level: green is easy, yellow a little harder, blue often quite tough and purple usually very difficult.

On the plus side, you don’t technically need to solve the final one, as you’ll be able to answer that one by a process of elimination. What’s more, you can make up to four mistakes, which gives you a little bit of breathing room.

It’s a little more involved than something like Wordle, however, and there are plenty of opportunities for the game to trip you up with tricks. For instance, watch out for homophones and other word games that could disguise the answers.