Today’s Connections Hints & Answers For January 15, 2025 (Puzzle #584)

If you are looking for a tool to help you finish today’s Connections puzzle, you are in the right place. There are a few tricky spots in this one, and I personally had some trouble getting to the right answers. A little extra knowledge would make this much easier, which is what we’re offering up for you on today’s puzzle. This extra knowledge will make it a faster and less frustrating process for you to finish it up and keep your streak alive.

If you want a simple but less word-based game, the NYT’s Tiles puzzle will fulfill both of those desires for you. Like Connections, it is a different puzzle every day that can be solved in less than 10 minutes. It feels a lot like Mahjong, in that you are selecting two tiles at a time to match them up, and they clear away as you do. The difference is that each tile has layers, and it is the layers that you are matching and clearing. Each tile will only go away once all the layers have been cleared.

Today’s Connections Category Hints

JANUARY 15 #584

If you are looking for hints on today’s puzzle without spoilers, there are four clues waiting for you below. Because of the words used in today’s puzzle, there are some odd interactions and some meanings that you will need to know in order to get the right answers. There are also some red herrings as usual, which can complicate things in any puzzle.

One category is about something used to quicken or improve a process

One category is about words used to describe something that may not be performing at capacity

One category is about words used to modify something specific that you might find at a food service establishment

One category is about four things that can be described using the same added moniker

If you are still unsure as to what the categories are, you can get a nudge by learning the category names below. This is often the nudge most people need to finish the puzzle, but if you are missing out on the last word for any particular category, the spoilers are further down.

Today’s Connections Answers

JANUARY 15 #584

Yellow Answers: Revealed & Explained

This category is all about the means by which to do something. This one was a little confusing, there are quite a few “size” words in this puzzle, so MEDIUM looked more like it should belong with those words instead. Meanwhile, I don’t necessarily think of VEHICLE in this sense, even though that is certainly what it is. That said, MECHANISM along with some of the later words all look like automated things and could have included VEHICLE as well, making things quite confusing to narrow down what this category was.

Green Answers: Revealed & Explained

Likewise, this category was quite similar. I wouldn’t normally put LIGHT and LOW together. In fact, I wouldn’t normally put LIGHT with any of the other words in this category. I assume that here it’s meant to mean “light on x” but I didn’t think of that when I was looking at this list. As usual, context is key and in light of knowing the category now, it makes more sense, but when you don’t know the context it’s much harder to see.

Blue Answers: Revealed & Explained

I think this one was difficult because I don’t think I have heard PERFECT used to describe any kind of drink specification before. I would have guessed DIRTY, DRY, and WET for a number of different drinks, but I haven’t heard anyone order anything “perfect” before. I mean, I want my drink to be made to perfection any time I order it, but I don’t think that’s what it means. Google said that it means it’s a little sweeter than a DRY martini, which tells me I should learn that specification, so I can use it myself.

Purple Answers: Revealed & Explained

I do not think I would have gotten this one without any context, except by grouping the words that seemed to go with nothing else. Unfortunately, BIG is part of the group of size-related words and therefore looks confusing when the puzzle first starts. After that, once you have eliminated some of those other words in the first couple of categories, you might have a better chance depending on your knowledge of these characters. With all luck, you can finish your puzzle quickly.

Other Games Like Connections

If you still want some games to play, there are lots of word and number-based puzzles in the box below.