NYT Connections today hints and answers — Saturday, January 18 (#587)

Looking for clues for today’s Connections answers? The Connections answers on January 18 for puzzle #587 is easier than yesterday’s puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle’s difficulty at 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 so you can keep your Connections streak going. And if the clues aren’t enough, you’ll find all four answers below, with the category titles and the correlating words.

Plus, we’re including a reflection on yesterday’s puzzle, #585, in case you’re reading this in a different time zone.

Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #587. 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.

Today’s Connections words are: Label, Spine, Page, Tide, Urge, Sticker, Track, Spur, Corner, Artist, Drive, Tables, Itch, Thorn, Album, and Impulse.

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

• 🟨 Yellow: Desire
• 🟩 Green: Barb
• 🟦 Blue: Info on a record
• 🟪 Purple: Turn the ____

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: Don’t get stuck on desire while listening to your favorite record or changing the paradigm.

Today’s Connections answers

So, what are today’s Connections answers for game #587?

Drumroll, please…

• 🟨 Desire: Drive, impulse, itch, urge
• 🟩 Barb: Spine, spur, sticker, thorn
• 🟦 Info on a record: Album, artist, label, track
• 🟪 Turn the ____: Corner, page, tables, tide

Today, I had some Connections blinders on. I saw Thorn, Spur and Tide and was immediately thinking sports team. I could not find that fourth team though but it stuck in my craw the whole way through.

Where I did start was with album, artist, label and track as things on a record. Even with the popularity of vinyl I can see why this was a blue category.

I knocked out the yellow category because it was there and I wanted to be able to see the final 8 easier. So, drive, impulse, itch and urge. I briefly considered spur but it wasn’t quite right. Drive isn’t either but it fits better.

I became stuck here scraping the walls of my brain for a fourth sports team that was never going to come.

What got me around it was putting corner, page and tables together because I was thinking books. I took a strike throwing spine in. The one away clue got me to finally wake up and look at the board.

Finally saw sticker, thorn and spur. I assumed the sticking words were supposed to be the easier of the two groupings. Knowing which was which I put in the purple quartet of turn the corner, turn the page, turn the tables and turn the tide.

Then we wrapped it up with barbs; spine, spur, sticker and thorn.

Yesterday’s Connections answers

• 🟨 Frankfurter: Banger, brat, link, sausage
• 🟩 Strike: Bop, hit, knock tap
• 🟦 Web browsers: Chrome, Edge, Opera, Safari
• 🟪 Ending with beer brands: Autoharp, Contrabass, Pepperoni, Rosebud

Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #586, which had a difficulty rating of 3.5 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.

Surprisingly the difficulty today comes in the form of traps rather than difficult connections.

I found that out when I fell for the hit songs trap of bop, hit and banger. Nothing else fit with that list though. I was able to recalibrate with knock and tap for the green group.

Quickly locked down web browsers with Chrome, Edge, Opera and Safari.

From there I took a quick strike when I comboed banger, brat, sausage and pepperoni. Link was the next one and I took a couple of strikes trying to figure out which one to swap with.

I was not seeing the beer brands for the purple group. But there they are in autoharp, contrabass, pepperoni, and rosebud.