If you’re looking for the October 11 Connections hints and answers, we’ve got you covered right here.

Hey there, Connectors! Welcome to the start of a new week! I hope you had a lovely weekend. I’m very glad to be back with you for another weekday run of Connections hints that (hopefully) don’t suck.

As always, we’ll get the Monday edition started with a fun, upbeat song. The whole idea with this is to help you kick off the week on a positive note, perhaps with a little boogie and singalong.

I should have kept a record of all the songs I’ve offered up either in this section or as the daily end-of-column recommendation, but it doesn’t seem like I’ve gone with this classic before. So here’s “D.A.N.C.E” by the second-greatest French house act of all time, Justice:

Before we start, we’ve got a lovely community on Discord , where we chat about Connections , the rest of the NYT games and all kinds of things. You’re more than welcome to join us!

Also, my weekend editions of this column are available over on my newsletter, Pastimes . I sometimes write about other things that are on my mind there as well.

Today’s NYT Connections hints and answers for Monday, October 12 are coming right up. Let’s get rolling!

Connections is a free New York Times daily word game that you can play on the NYT ’s website or Games app. If you have an NYT All Access or Games subscription, you can access the Connections archive, which includes every previous game.

Connections presents you with a grid of 16 words (sometimes phrases, symbols or numbers). The aim is to arrange them into four groups of four. You don’t know how they hit together or what the category for each group is: that’s what you have to figure out.

There’s only one correct solution and there are often red herrings. You can guess incorrectly three times. A fourth wrong guess, and it’s game over.

Each group is color coded. The yellow group is usually the easiest to deduce, followed by green, blue and purple. Often, the yellow and green groups have synonyms, the blues have cultural references and the purples have some kind of wordplay involved. But this is not a hard and fast rule. Be ready for curveballs – part of the fun of Connections is in how the NYT shakes things up to keep you on your toes.

As with Wordle and similar games, it’s easy to share results with your friends using an emoji-based grid. The game tracks your progress too.

Many players take pride in having long win streaks or getting a reverse rainbow – correctly guessing the purple, blue, green and yellow groups in that order with no mistakes. That adds an extra little challenge.

Today’s NYT Connections Word List

After today’s Connections word list, I’ll give you a hint for each category. After that, I’ll reveal one word that goes into each group. Then I’ll reveal the categories, followed by the full answers.

  • CALAMARI
  • MANDARIN
  • STATE
  • ABBREVIATION
  • NICKNAME
  • HANDLE
  • SHAPE
  • WEATHER
  • CONDITION
  • CONTRACTION
  • SITUATIION
  • BEAR
  • ALKYLAMIDE
  • STAND
  • ELISION
  • MELAMINE

Today’s NYT Connections Hints

The hints for today’s Connections categories are:

  • 🟨 Yellow group — how things are, currently
  • 🟩 Green group — resist, perhaps
  • 🟦 Blue group — cut those things down
  • 🟪 Purple group — constructed from letters that help other kinds of letters get where they’re going (there’s a hint in the grid too...)

One Answer For Each NYT Connections Group

Be warned: we’re starting to get into spoiler territory.

Let’s take a look at one answer for each group.

  • 🟨 Yellow group — STATE
  • 🟩 Green group — WEATHER
  • 🟦 Blue group —ELISION
  • 🟪 Purple group — ALKYLAMIDE

Today’s NYT Connections Categories

Today’s Connections groups are...

  • 🟨 Yellow group — status
  • 🟩 Green group — tolerate
  • 🟦 Blue group — word shortenings, often
  • 🟪 Purple group — words made using U.S. postal abbreviations

Today’s NYT Connections Answer

Spoiler alert! Don’t scroll any further down the page until you’re ready to find out today’s Connections answers.

This is your last chance to look away.

This is your final warning!

Today’s Connections answers are...

  • 🟨 Yellow group — status (CONDITION, SHAPE, SITUATION, STATE)
  • 🟩 Green group — tolerate (BEAR, HANDLE, STAND, WEATHER)
  • 🟦 Blue group — word shortenings, often (ABBREVIATION, CONTRACTION, ELISION, NICKNAME)
  • 🟪 Purple group — words made using U.S. postal abbreviations (ALKYLAMIDE, CALAMARI, MANDARIN, MELAMINE)

ABBREVIATION and CONTRACTION made the blues pretty clear to me out of the gate. The yellows were next up. No issue there. Neither did I have a problem with the greens.

This was one of those days where I was a little lazy and didn’t concern myself with trying to figure out what linked the purple words. Good thing I didn’t, or I would have been here all day trying to deduce that category. Even for Connections , that one’s pretty ridiculous.

If any of you figured out the link between the purples before submitting them, I’d love to know. Perhaps having STATE and ABBREVIATION next to each other on the top line helped you figure it out?

Regardless, I managed to get my 589th consecutive win here.

How did you get on this time? Here’s my grid:

Want to know more about how everything fits together? Let’s explore today’s game in more depth in my NYT Connections Answers Explained column. You can check that out by visiting my author page .

Be sure to check my blog for hints and the answer for tomorrow’s game of Connections if you need them.

P.S. Not sure why this song from one of Scotland’s finest lodged itself in my brain recently, but “Turn” by Travis is a fine tune, so I thought I would share it with you. Let me know how much you understand of the chatter before the song actually starts in this video:

Have a great day! Stay hydrated! Be kind to yourself and each other! Call someone you love!

Please follow my blog for more NYT Connections hints and help with other word games, and even some video game news, insights and analysis. I’d really appreciate that as it helps me out. If you share this column with others who play Connections, that would be lovely too. You can also read my weekend editions of this column and more of my writing at my newsletter, Pastimes .