Today's NYT Connections Answers #1236 for October 29, 2026

Select four words you think belong together and submit. Get it right and the group locks in with its colour and category name; get it wrong and you lose one of your four mistakes. If you are one word off, the game tells you you're "one away".

Each puzzle's groups are colour-coded by difficulty:

• Yellow is the most straightforward link.
• Green is still fair but needs a second look.
• Blue often involves trivia, jargon or a less familiar meaning.
• Purple is the trickiest, built on wordplay, hidden words or words that can precede or follow another word.

• Find the red herrings first. Puzzles usually include five or six words that seem to fit one category. Count them. If you have more than four, one belongs elsewhere.
• Read words in more than one way. "Bass" is a fish and an instrument; "Pole" is a person and a stick. The purple group often depends on a second meaning, a spelling trick or a word hiding inside another.
• Solve by elimination. When you are sure of the yellow group, lock it in early so the remaining twelve words are easier to sort.
• Don't spend mistakes on guesses. If you are torn between two groupings, work on a different colour first; the leftovers often settle the question for you.
• Shuffle. The grid's starting layout can lead you astray. Shuffling breaks accidental patterns.

Every colour group opens in three steps. See hint gives a nudge toward the theme (when our editors haven't written one, we show the category with all but the first letter of each word masked). See category shows the official group name. Finally, you can reveal the four words one at a time, so you can take just one word and still finish the group yourself.

If you'd rather jump straight to the solution, the Connections answers page lists every group, and the archive covers past puzzles.