NYT Connections today hints and answers — Wednesday, October 16 (#493)

Looking for today’s Connections answers? The Connections answers on October 16 for puzzle #493 takes a dip in difficulty compared to 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. 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, #492, in case you’re reading this in a different time zone.

Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #493. 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: As some future point
• 🟩 Green: Parts of a tournament setup
• 🟦 Blue: Bit of breakfast cereal
• 🟪 Purple: What the outstretched index and middle fingers can represent

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: Hold up your peace fingers, eat some cereal, get into tournament and consider the future.

Today’s Connections answers

So, what are today’s Connections answers for game #493?

Drumroll, please…

• 🟨 At some future point: Eventually, later, next, soon
• 🟩 Parts of a tournament setup: Bracket, bye, round, seed
• 🟦 Bit of breakfast cereal: Cheerio, flake, pebble, puff
• 🟪 What the outstretched index and middle fingers can represent: Peace, scissors, two, victory

I’ve been reading a lot about the college football playoffs, and playing College Football 25. Tournaments have been on the mind, which led to seeing bracket and seed right away. Round was quickly spotted from there. I debated Bye for Bye Round but nothing else fit, so we got the green category.

Cheerio and Pebble stuck out next, so I was looking for brand names or partial brand names before we got to Flake and Puff. The others are vague enough but Cheerio really stuck out.

Today’s purple category has to have the longest description title for a group that I have ever seen in a Connections grid. The title is 9 words long and only three of them are less than four letters. Wild.

Anywho, peace and two stuck out to me. From there I got scissors. Victory was last because I briefly blocked out that people do that to signal victory. It remains terrible.

Yellow became today’s rote fill with words that indicate a future point; eventually, later, next soon.

Yesterday’s Connections answers

Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #491, which had a difficulty rating of 3.5 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.

Some days you just follow the flow.

I got going with Nickelodeon which immediately led to Discovery. I don’t know why I know Oxygen is a channel since I’ve never watched it but I got that one third and wrapped it up with History for TV channels.

From there we were still coming down from the high of the Oregon vs Ohio State game on Saturday and quickly spotted center, guard, quarterback and safety for football positions, three offensive players and one on defense.

Clowns was a quick hit from there where I saw Joker and Pennywise. Then I got Ronald. I vaguely recalled Homey D. Clown but had to look up some In Living Color clips to really remind myself, mostly I just remembered that he was played by Damon Wayans.

And we wrapped it up with D words, Defense, Democrat, Dimensional and Drive.