Connections Index Today: Responses from October 28, No. 1,235

Here are today’s tips and answers for NYT Connections #1,235 for Wednesday October 28, 2026.

Today’s Hookup Tips

Here are four clues for today’s Connections puzzle groupings, ordered from the easiest yellow group to the difficult (and sometimes weird) purple group.

Yellow group index: Think about Valentine’s Day.

Green group index: Electronic messages.

Blue group index: Discover the red planet.

Purple group index: This looks like… something you could travel on.

Answers to Today’s Connections

Yellow group: Romantic taste.

Green group: Components of an email.

Blue group: NASA Mars Rovers.

Purple group: Path homophones.

CNET publishes daily answers and tips for the New York Times Mini Crossword, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition, and Strands puzzles.

What are today’s Connections answers?

Yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is romantic taste.

The four answers are attraction, crush, feelings and interest.

Green words in today’s Connections

The theme is one of the components of an email.

The four answers are attachment, body, signature and subject.

Blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is NASA’s Mars rovers.

The four answers are curiosity, opportunity, perseverance and wit.

Purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is the homophones of the paths.

The four responses are coarse (course), rode (route), rout (route) and weigh (path).

Let’s talk about today’s connections

I’ve seen some buzz online about the purple category not working for some people with different accents. The main problem is the “rout”, which some call “rowt” and others “root”. (Think of Bobby Troup’s famous song, (Get Your Kicks on) Route 66.) People with a keen eye for soundalikes will probably make the connection.

Also, “attachment” is a pretty good diversion here, as it may fall into the yellow category, meaning “romantic taste”, but it ends up in the green “components of an email” group.

How to play Connections

In Connections, you look at a grid of 16 words and choose four words that are related to each other. You do this four times until all 16 words of the puzzle are grouped together. The hard part is that Times puzzle editor Wyna Liu chooses words that can fit into multiple groups. The obvious guess: Hey, those are four animals! – will almost always be false. I’ve compiled my favorite Connections tips if you need a boost.

The Times has a login bot, like Wordle’s. Go there after playing to receive a numerical score and have the program analyze your answers. Players registered in the Times Games section can go wild by tracking their progress, including the number of completed puzzles, win rate, number of times they achieved a perfect score, and their winning streak.

Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, CNET editor-in-chief, journalist and pop culture enthusiast, is co-author of “Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the ’70s and ’80s,” as well as “The Totally Sweet ’90s.” She has been a journalist since 1989 and works for Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune and NBC News Digital. She is part of Generation X in terms of date of birth, words and deeds. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she’ll be first in line.

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