NYT Connections today hints and answers — Sunday, October 20 (#497)

Looking for today’s Connections answers? The Connections answers on October 20 for puzzle #497 are a smidge easier than yesterday’s puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle’s difficulty at 2 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, #496, in case you’re reading this in a different time zone.

Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #497. 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: Bit of newspaper writing
• 🟩 Green: Noisy disturbance
• 🟦 Blue: Table tennis needs
• 🟪 Purple: Homophones of coordinating conjunctions

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: Think back to the rowdy days of elementary school writing lessons, gym class, and School House Rock to solve today’s puzzle.

Today’s Connections answers

So, what are today’s Connections answers for game #497?

Drumroll, please…

• 🟨 Bit of newspaper writing: Article, column, feature, story
• 🟩 Noisy disturbance: Clatter, racket, row, ruckus
• 🟦 Table tennis needs: Ball, net, paddle, table
• 🟪 Homophones of coordinating conjunctions: Butt, fore, oar, sew

Today might just hold the record for how quickly I was able to solve a category. Once I saw Article and Column, it was a matter of seconds before Feature and Story popped out at me, rounding out today’s yellow category.

I struck out once trying to connect all the sports-related words I saw before stumbling on Clatter and Ruckus. Row came to me after a moment, but it took me longer than I care to admit to remember Racket had more than one meaning.

With green out of the way, next came blue with Ball, Net, Paddle, and Table, all essential equipment you need for a game of ping pong.

That left the purple category, which you might need a dictionary to parse today. At the very least it’ll have you thinking back to Schoolhouse Rock (conjunction junction, what’s that function~). Ok, fess up: Which one of the English majors on the Connections Crew came up with this one?

Yesterday’s Connections answers

Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #496, which had a difficulty rating of 2.5 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.

The purple category has to be one of the easiest, for me, that I’ve yet to come across in my time playing Connections.

I saw Metroid first, but it was a quick glide to grab Halo, Civilization and Madden. I’ve reviewed the current Madden 25 and am unreasonably hyped for Civilization 7 coming next year. Video games are on the mind.

Okay, putting the controller down, I saw candle and incense when I first opened the puzzle and had in mind a category around a relaxing bath. So, adding lotion and soap to that list was a pleasant fill.

The last two were a coin flip but inspire, prompt and provoke were on top of each other, so grabbing generate made yellow a fast group.

Which left the blue category’s stings, emotional and physical, with insult, jellyfish, nettle and wasp.