Looking for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on November 17 for puzzle #525 are harder than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 3.3 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, #524, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #524. 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: Alliance
- 🟩 Green: Close-fitting
- 🟦 Blue: Occasions when one might kneel
- 🟪 Purple: What an apostrophe might indicate
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: Form your group of tight friends and take a knee while apologizing to your favorite punctuation.
Today's Connections answers
So, what are today's Connections answers for game #525?
Drumroll, please...
- 🟨 Alliance: Association, Guild, League, Union
- 🟩 Close-fitting: Clingy, Sleek, Snug, Slinky
- 🟦 Occasions When One Might Kneel: Apology, Dubbing, Prayer, Proposal
- 🟪 What an Apostrophe Might Inidate: Contraction, Foot, Possessive, Quotation
I don't usually do the Connections guides, so it was an exciting adventure filling in. I locked in the first category almost effortlessly today, figuring out that a few words were based around teams or groups. It turns out it's "Alliance," which is close enough.
From there, I was a bit stumped for a minute before I caught on to the fact that "Clingy" was linked with other tight things. From there, I connected "Sleek" and "Snug" to "Clingy" but had to think about Slinky for a minute.
From there, I fell apart and got the puzzle wrong. I had to rely on the answers and the Connection Companion to find the guide.
In retrospect, the use of "What an Apostrophe Might Inidate" is quite clever for the final level, and while I wish I had spotted the link, I appreciate the effort that went into the puzzle. The same is true for the kneeling part of the puzzle, though I feel like I could have caught that if I had taken my time a little more.
Yesterday's Connections answers
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #524, which had a difficulty rating of 2.8 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.
I was pressed for time today and jumped on a potential Marvel characters group to start. Strike one.
Moving on from there, I saw snapback and pillbox which I knew were hats, so just had to find a beret and derby to round out the green quartet.
Gator (Florida) and Sooner (Oklahoma) struck out as college mascots which got us to Wolverine (Michigan) and Volunteer (Tennessee). I did take one strike trying to put Bananas in before Volunteer, but I was thinking of the UC Santa Cruz Banana Slugs.
I wasn't looking for the purple group but as I was reading the remaining 8 eight words, I said to myself "Go rogue" and that group clicked. From there we got to "Go bananas", "Go commando", and "Go Figure."
Which left the yellow category of things that prevent leaks with cap, cover, plug and seal.
