NYT Connections today hints and answers — Wednesday, November 13 (#521)

Looking for today’s Connections answers? The Connections answers on November 13 for puzzle #521 are a smidge harder than yesterday’s puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle’s difficulty at 3.2 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, #520, in case you’re reading this in a different time zone.

Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #521. 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: Things that are yellow
• 🟩 Green: Building add-ons
• 🟦 Blue: Concerns for a dentist
• 🟪 Purple: Words that seem longer written than spoken

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: Get yourself to the dentist, check for yellow, add on a building and try speaking it before saying it.

Today’s Connections answers

So, what are today’s Connections answers for game #521?

Drumroll, please…

• 🟨 Things that are yellow: Canary, lemon, minion, mustard
• 🟩 Building add-ons: Addition, annex, extension, wing
• 🟦 Concerns for a dentist: Calculus, cavity, plaque, tartar
• 🟪 Words that seem longer written than spoken: Colonel, Pharaoh, Wednesday, Worcestershire

We returned to the New York Times site for today’s Connections, as the Tech Guild is back to work at the Times and encouraging people to return.

I tried a sauces category with tartar, mustard, worcestershire, and lemon. Twas a trap.

So we moved on to building add-ons because I saw wing and annex. Extension and addition were quick finds from there.

I returned to mustard as I saw canary and lemon for a yellow things in the yellow category grouping. My son loves Minions so that, for me, was a quick snag.

After that I got stuck.

I had most of the blue group with cavity, plaque and tartar. I have never heard of calculus when it comes to dentistry so it was a wild guess that got me the blue. Calculus is apparently a form of calcified form of tartar.

Which leaves the purple category of “Words that seem longer written than spoken.” We had Colonel, Pharaoh, Wednesday and Worcestershire. I disagree with the Connections crew on the title here, it feels like a real stretch.

Yesterday’s Connections answers

Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #520, which had a difficulty rating of 3 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.

Before we begin, I do want to acknowledge that the Tech Guild has ended their strike against the New York Times. As of this writing, I have not seen an announcement about readers returning to the NYT Games but the Strike games website is still live. If you were avoiding the official app or website in support, I think it’s safe to return. But do check in with the Tech Guild social media accounts if you’re still following and want to know more from them.

We finish today’s puzzle via the strike website.

Whenever I see ram in a game I immediately think that they’re going for an astrology connection, which is usually correct. Today, it got me.

I didn’t see the astrology connection I was looking for but did connect floret, spear and stalk. Took a second to find clove for vegetable “units.”

Bellyache and grumble stuck out next, it was guess at crab and I knew carp means to complain but I was flailing there, but it was correct. Seems that this should have been green and not yellow.

I had been eying robe, scales and blindfold so knocking out the first two categories made getting the purple features of justice an easy grab by adding blindfold.

Working for a technology website, I should probably be a bit more embarrassed that I saved laptop specs for last with RAM, resolution, speed and storage. Ouch.