Looking for clues for today’s Connections answers? The Connections answers on April 29 for puzzle #688 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 so you can keep your Connections streak going. And if the clues aren’t enough, you’ll find all four answers below, with the category titles and the correlating words.
Plus, we’re including a reflection on yesterday’s puzzle, #687, in case you’re reading this in a different time zone.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #688. 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.
Today’s Connections words are: Ladder, Batter, Suit, Candlestick, Infield, Rope, Paste, Pitcher, Gemstone, Mountain, Plate, Mixture, Tree, Dough, Rhombus, and Placemat.
If you need hints to solve the groupings, then here are the themes of each, based on the order of difficulty:
- 🟨 Yellow: Cooking concoctions
- 🟩 Green: Seen on a table at a dinner party
- 🟦 Blue: Things to climb
- 🟪 Purple: What “diamond” can refer to
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: Get some cooking in for a party of diamonds before a climb.
Today’s Connections answers
So, what are today’s Connections answers for game #688?
Drumroll, please…
- 🟨 Cooking concoctions: Batter, dough, mixture, paste
- 🟩 Seen on a table at a dinner party: Candlestick, pitcher, placemat, plate
- 🟦 Things to climb: Ladder, mountain, rope, tree
- 🟪 What “diamond” can refer to: Gemstone, infield, rhombus, suit
There’s a few baseball-based traps in this one but that’s not what tripped me up. I stared down Gemstone and was trying to find an HBO connection for way too long.
To help myself with my HBO thinking, I threw together batter, dough and paste before finding mixture. My thought was mixture as a whole and not concoctions, but whatever, it worked today.
From there I had pitcher and placemat and then plate and candlestick (even if I’d rather it was Candlestick park for the Giants).
At this point, I was thinking last names of major HBO characters Gemstones from Righteous Gemstones and Mountain from Game of Thrones. It was here I had to admit my HBO defeat.
Thus, we put together mountain, rope and tree as climbs. I didn’t want to put ladder because it was so obvious but you have to.
And there we ended with gemstone, infield, rhombus and suit as things that can be diamonds.
Yesterday’s Connections answers
- 🟨 Hair products: Gel, Mousse, Spray, Wax
- 🟩 Austere: Bare, Plain, Simple, Spare
- 🟦 Clues at a crime scene: Fiber, Fingerprint, Hair, Tire Mark
- 🟪 Weary: Bore, Drain, Exhaust, Tire
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #687, which had a difficulty rating of 2.8 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.
I’ve spent enough time in the bathroom trying to tame my wavy hair to recognize today’s yellow category instantly with Gel, Mousse, Spray, and Wax.
I’ve been replaying the Phoenix Wright games, so once I saw Fingerprint, that sent me looking for other common clues in whodunnits, and I picked up Fiber, Hair, and Tire Mark to round out the blue category.
Whenever I’m stumped, I start looking for synonyms, and I found just that with Bare, Plain, Simple, and Spare for today’s green category.
That left purple as today’s rote fill with Bore, Drain, Exhaust, and Tire.
