NYT Connections today hints and answers — Monday, October 28 (#505)

Looking for today’s Connections answers? The Connections answers on October 28 for puzzle #505 are much easier than yesterday’s puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle’s difficulty at 2.3 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, #504, in case you’re reading this in a different time zone.

Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #505. 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: Audible apps
• 🟩 Green: Indicate
• 🟦 Blue: Church of England wedding vow verbs
• 🟪 Purple: Magic words

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: Read between the lines, renew your vows, dust off your spellbooks, and mind your manners to solve today’s puzzle.

Today’s Connections answers

So, what are today’s Connections answers for game #505?

Drumroll, please…

• 🟨 Audio apps: Audible, pandora, shazam, tidal
• 🟩 Indicate: Mean, signify, spell, suggest
• 🟦 Church of England wedding vow verbs: Cherish, have, hold, love
• 🟪 Magic words: Abracadabra, please, presto, thank you

Though today’s puzzle took a dive in difficulty, there were enough red herrings between the yellow and purple categories that I struck out a few times trying to link all the words you might hear in a magic act.

Once that turned out to be a dead end, I saw Pandora, Tidal, and Audible and realized that Shazam meant the app, not what a magician might say after pulling a rabbit from their hat.

After that came the blue category. That these verbs all stem from vows for a specific church went over my head; I just recognized them from any number of movie wedding sequences.

I was still convinced Abracadabra and Presto had to be related, but with Spell the only other magical-sounding word left, I was stumped. That is until I scanned the clues again and saw Please and Thank You, and finally, the Connections Crew’s cheeky bit of wordplay hit me. Magic words indeed.

That left the green category, and it was easy enough to figure out the link between Mean, Signify, Spell, and Suggest.

Yesterday’s Connections answers

Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #504, which had a difficulty rating of 3.3 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.

I kicked off yesterday’s puzzle by solving the easier category first with Cute, Fresh, Smart, and Wise — all things I was called as a kid (though “ass” proceeded smart most of the time).

Next, we swung to the opposite end of the difficulty spectrum with the purple category. Something about Rascals being plural stuck in my craw. What else could it be except “The Little Rascals”? With that in mind, other “little” properties jumped out, with Prince, Mermaid, and Tramp rounding out the category.

After that came Air, Feeling, Mood, and Quality, all words with a certain je ne sais quoi for green.

That made the blue category today’s rote fill, which I managed to suss out before it was revealed after digging deep into what I remembered from high school science class.