Connections hints and answers for Sun, October 20th

This guide is for a previous day! Looking for today's solution? Check out the Connections hint for Sunday 27th April!

Looking for a hint to help with today's Connections puzzle on 20th October? If today's assortment of words has you in a tizzy we have just the thing to help. Below is a host of hints to help you solve the word groups.

Connections is a word puzzle game published every day by the New York Times (NYT), the hosts of the endlessly popular Wordle puzzle. Crafted each day by puzzle-maker Wyna Liu, Connections presents you with a selection of 16 seemingly disparate words, and you have to group them together in four sets of four, where each group of four words has a common theme.

It's a simple premise, but as many of us here know, Connections can be devilishly difficult at times, filled to the brim with red herrings, misleading words, and little-known trivia. If you're struggling to solve today's Connections puzzle, this guide will help you to find the answers for Sunday, 20th October 2024.

Below we offer some carefully crafted hints and clues for today's Connections, and after that we reveal the four different groups, and finally the Connections answers themselves for those who are tired of wondering how it all fits together.

In this guide:

• Hints for today's Connections
• What are today's Connections words?
• What are today's Connections groups?
• What are today's Connections answers?
• What is Connections?

Connections hints for Sunday 20th October

Here's a hint for each of the word groups in today's Connections puzzle, plus a couple more Connections clues to help you find the answer.

Our Connections hints for today are:

• Yellow (Easiest): Things you may see on the RPS website.
• Green (Easy): An argument.
• Blue (Medium): These words have a particular sport in common.
• Purple (Hardest): These words have other meanings when read aloud.
• Extra hint 1: 'Racket' and 'Ball' belong to two different groups.
• Extra hint 2: 'Row' is used as a noun, not a verb here.

If you're looking for more Connections hints today to help narrow down the answers, tap the spoiler text below to reveal one word belonging to each group:

Yellow (Easiest):

FEATURE

Green (Easy):

RACKET

Blue (Medium):

PADDLE

Purple (Hardest):

FORE

Eight Great Wordle-likes

What are today's Connections words?

Here are the 16 Connections words for today:

What are today's Connections groups?

If you need an even bigger clue to figure out today's Connections puzzle, below we'll reveal the four correct Connections groups - the themes which link together each set of four words in the Connections grid.

Here are the Connections groups for today:

• Bit of newspaper writing
• Noisy disturbance
• Table tennis needs
• Homophones of coordinating conjunctions

Now that you know the themes for the various different Connections in today's puzzle, see if you can solve it! If not, check just below for the full answer.

Spoiler warning! Today's Connections answer lies ahead!

What are today's Connections answers?

Here are the full answers to today's Connections puzzle on Sunday, 20th October:

• 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

Let the celebrations commence for I have solved all Connections groups today (that's two days in a row - a personal best). Originally I popped 'Racket' in with the 'Table tennis' category but quickly realised my mistake after grouping together 'Clatter', 'Ruckus' and 'Row' (I read it as the action of rowing at first). I then got the writing group, which given my profession, I probably should have gotten first, really. The last group was a mystery to me but I had the others so it didn't really matter, that's the joy of Connections!

Congratulations if you got today's Connections answer right, with or without the help of our handy hints above! And if you didn't succeed today, don't worry - a new Connections puzzle is released every day at midnight, so you can try again tomorrow, just like with Wordle.

What is Connections?

Connections is one of the most popular daily puzzle games published by the New York Times (owners of Wordle). The aim of Connections is to group the 16 words of the day into four groups, where each group of four words has a common theme.

For instance, the words "Hook", "Nana", "Peter", and "Wendy" are all Peter Pan characters. Or to take another example, "Action", "Ballpark", "Go", and "Stick" are all words which commonly come just before the word "Figure".

Your job is to figure out what these themes are that connect the various words together - but be wary, because a lot of the time there are red herring connections placed in there deliberately to throw you off! To win the game, you have to find all four Connections without making 4 mistakes. On your fourth mistake, the game is over and the answer is revealed automatically.

Each of the four groups in each day's Connections puzzle is also assigned a different colour, which represents how easy or difficult the Connection is to find. These colours are: Yellow (Easiest), Green (Easy), Blue (Medium), and Purple (Hardest).

That wraps up today's guide on how to solve the NYT Connections word puzzle. If you're looking for help with Wordle, we've also got you covered with our list of past Wordle answers, as well as the Wordle hint and answer for Sunday 27th April. You can also check out our list of the best starting words for Wordle, or use our Wordle Solver tool to help you find the answer with ease!