Today’s NYT ‘Connections’ Hints And Answers For Tuesday, November 12 (#520)

Looking for Monday’s Connections hints and answers instead? You can find them here:

Hey, folks! I hope your week’s off to a good start.

I have two recommendations for you today. Let’s get to the first one right now since it’s related to Connections.

For the last couple of days, I’ve been trying out a clone called Connections Stacked. Rather than a 16-word grid, it gives you 15. Here’s the big twist: there are five groups to sort the grid into, each containing between one and five words.

It’s fun and it poses a different challenge. It prompts me to think about not only how the words might go together, but how many of them there may be in each group. I think it’ll help refine my approach to Connections proper by making me remember to absorb the entire grid before making a guess. (Thanks for the heads up, Porter!)

Today’s NYT Connections hints and answers for Tuesday, November 12, are coming right up.

How To Play Connections

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Connections is a free, popular New York Times daily word game. You get a new puzzle at midnight every day. You can play on the NYT website or Games app.

You’re presented with a grid of 16 words. Your task is to arrange them into four groups of four by figuring out the links between them. The groups could be things like items you can click, names for research study participants or words preceded by a body part.

There’s only one solution for each puzzle, and you’ll need to be careful when it comes to words that might fit into more than one category. You can shuffle the words to perhaps help you see links between them.

Each group is color coded. The yellow group is usually the easiest to figure out, blue and green fall in the middle, and the purple group is usually the most difficult one. The purple group often involves wordplay.

Select four words you think go together and press Submit. If you make a guess and you’re incorrect, you’ll lose a life. If you’re close to having a correct group, you might see a message telling you that you’re one word away from getting it right, but you’ll still need to figure out which one to swap.

If you make four mistakes, it’s game over. Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen with the help of some hints, and, if you’re really struggling, today’s Connections answers. As with Wordle and other similar games, it’s easy to share results with your friends on social media and group chats.

If you have an NYT All Access or Games subscription, you can access the Connections archive. This includes every previous game of Connections, so you can go back and play any of those that you have missed.

Aside from the first 60 games or so, you should be able to find my hints for each grid via Google if you need them! Just click here and add the date of the game for which you need clues or the answers to the search query.

What Are Today’s Connections Hints?

Scroll slowly! Just after the hints for each of today’s Connections groups, I’ll reveal what the groups are without immediately telling you which words go into them.

Today’s 16 words are...

• RAM
• ROBE
• CLOVE
• CRAB
• SWORD
• SPEED
• SCALES
• SPEAR
• BELLYACHE
• BLINDFOLD
• STORAGE
• CARP
• STALK
• GRUMBLE
• RESOLUTION
• FLORET

And the hints for today’s groups are:

• Yellow group — grouse, whine
• Green group — "ear" and "bushel" would fit in here
• Blue group — important details about the thing you're looking at right now
• Purple group — legal emblems, perhaps

What Are Today’s Connections Groups?

Need some extra help?

Be warned: we’re starting to get into spoiler territory.

Today’s groups are...

• Yellow group — complain
• Green group — vegetable units
• Blue group — laptop specs
• Purple group — features of justice personified

What Are Today’s Connections Answers?

Spoiler alert! Don’t scroll any further down the page until you’re ready to find out today’s Connections answers.

This is your final warning!

Today’s Connections answers are...

• Yellow group — complain (BELLYACHE, CARP, CRAB, GRUMBLE)
• Green group — vegetable units (CLOVE, FLORET, SPEAR, STALK)
• Blue group — laptop specs (RAM, RESOLUTION, SPEED, STORAGE)
• Purple group — features of justice personified (BLINDFOLD, ROBE, SCALES, SWORD)

No perfect game, but I'm back to winning ways. Here's how I fared:

🟨🟨🟨🟨

🟦🟩🟪🟩

🟪🟪🟪🟪

🟦🟦🟦🟦

🟩🟩🟩🟩

I got the yellows quickly, thanks to GRUMBLE, then slipped up with a guess of SWORD, SPEAR, RAM and CLOVE. I figured they had something to do with fish. I don't use Google when I play Connections, but "clove fish" and "ram fish" rang a bell, somehow. Ah well.

I managed to get the purple group next. ROBE and SCALES brought to mind emblems of justice. I vaguely recalled that Lady Justice was blindfolded, while SWORD made the most sense to round the group out.

The downsized grid made it easy to spot the greens, but I thought the other group would be the blues, so I submitted that first. I probably should have figured that out sooner given that I write about technology for a living but c'est la vie.

Excuse me for a second while I push my glasses up... I'd argue that SPEED isn't inherently a laptop spec, as there are multiple factors that determine a system's performance, which changes over time. RAM is one factor, and processor speed is another. Anyway...

That’s all there is to it for today’s Connections clues and answers. Be sure to check my blog for hints and the solution for Wednesday’s game if you need them.

P.S. Other than word games, the main topic I write about here at Forbes is Overwatch 2 (I occasionally cover it at my other main haunt, Engadget, as well). I've been hooked on that world since late 2016, when I bought a PlayStation 4 and checked out a trial weekend of the original Overwatch. But I wasn't around for the very beginning in May of that year.

So it's very exciting that there will be an Overwatch Classic mode in Overwatch 2 for the next few weeks. It'll be almost exactly the same as how the original Overwatch was at launch, at least in terms of gameplay (the visuals, audio and user interface will be more aligned with the current game).

Overwatch had changed dramatically by the time I first played it and vastly more so since then. For one thing, players are now grouped into teams of five instead of six — something that will be reverted for this mode.

I expect that I'll be playing this classic mode a lot of the next few weeks, to the detriment of my backlog — i.e. other games I'm hoping to check out before writing my games of the year list.

Anyway, if you have a decent PC or a console, I'd recommend checking out Overwatch 2l. It's free and it’s still a blast. I play for a bit almost every day. Whatever your play style, you should find some characters that make sense for you, as long as you can get to grips with the dynamics of a fast-paced first-person shooter. If you're interested in checking it out, let me know! I'd be happy to squad up and help you learn the ropes.

If you’re so inclined, please do follow my blog for more coverage of Connections and other word games and even some video game news, insights and analysis. It helps me out a lot!