NYT Connections today hints and answers — Friday, October 18 (#495)

Looking for today’s Connections answers? The Connections answers on October 18 for puzzle #495 gets a bit easier than yesterday’s puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle’s difficulty at 2.8 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, #494, in case you’re reading this in a different time zone.

Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #495. 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: Clunker
• 🟩 Green: Opportunity
• 🟦 Blue: Non-cash way to pay
• 🟪 Purple: Amazon _____

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: You’ve got a lemon on your hands while you pay for the chance to read about the Brazilian forest on your kindle.

Today’s Connections answers

So, what are today’s Connections answers for game #495?

Drumroll, please…

• 🟨 Clunker: Bust, dud, flop, miss
• 🟩 Opportunity: Chance, shot, time, turn
• 🟦 Non-cash way to pay: Card, charge, credit, plastic
• 🟪 Amazon _____: Kindle, Prime, rainforest, river

We got things going with the yellow category of clunkers. I saw flop and miss first, which led to bust and dud.

It took a minute for the other groups to click for me. Just wasn’t seeing it today. I was floating around charge and plastic before that one clicked. I thought card didn’t work because its in the other words like charge card, credit card, plastic card but eventually we got there with credit and card.

From there I snagged green with chance, shot, time, and turn.

I had Kindle and Rainforest at one point and never considered Amazon Prime. No clue why. Good thing, I suppose, that this was the rote fill.

It wasn’t until the third grouping that I spotted the Texas Hold ‘Em trap of card, river, flop and bust or maybe turn. Probably a good thing on my part. Don’t let that one get you.

Yesterday’s Connections answers

Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #494, which had a difficulty rating of 3.3 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.

I saw Goodfella and immediately started hunting for other movies. Which led us to Jaw(s) and Car(s), took a second but we found Swinger(s) soon after.

I took a couple strikes on the yellow category because I held on to field for too long. We had yard, lawn and green to start. Ended up swapping green for park but kept field. Strike 2.

To get around that I moved on and saw Harvard and Criminal near each other. This led to law, which helped find lemon and natural.

Which helped me to see address, answer, field and handle for the green category. From there we were able to correct our mistakes on the yellow category.