Today's Connections Hints & Answers For January 17, 2025 (Puzzle #586)

If you are trying to solve today’s Connections puzzle but are having trouble finishing it, there are hints and tricks that will help you knock it out of the park. There are plenty of problems to uncover in Connections puzzles, and there are some words that might trick you if you aren’t looking closely enough. However, today’s puzzle felt fairly good when I was solving it, and I hope to make it feel that good for you as well.

If you want to feel like you are 7 again, you should try out the NYT’s The Strands puzzle. It is just like the word search puzzles you had to solve in elementary school, except there is one issue with it. There is no word list for this one, and the letters can be in every direction. However, you will be given hints as you find other words in the puzzle, and that will give you everything you need to finish up the word search and get the points.

Today's Connections Category Hints

JANUARY 17 #586

The puzzle today isn’t that bad, as the categories are fairly general knowledge-based. However, some of them might have a little bit of crossover if you don’t catch the right detail. I did make two wrong guesses, so there are some tricks that could still get you. I am here to help you avoid those tricks, and with that here are four clues to get you to the end of the puzzle.

• One category is about four words for food that all made of the same type of meat
• One category is about four words that describe an action that is usually frowned upon
• One category is about four different kinds of systems that all do the same thing
• One category is about four words that all have a word hidden at the end of them

That may not be enough for you, depending on whether the hints helped or made you more confused. To help you sort them out a little more, there are the category names below.

Today's Connections Answers

JANUARY 17 #586

Yellow Answers: Revealed & Explained

I got this category pretty quick, as I have lived in several places with a large German population. I do feel like these aren’t really all the same thing, or at least there are small differences between them, but I do get the point. I did have PEPPERONI in here at first because I didn’t see the word LINK. After all, that is also often made with pieces de pork, but I was able to get it on my second attempt quite quickly. A BRAT is my favorite way to eat pork, and it’s often the only kind I will eat.

Green Answers: Revealed & Explained

With this one I was pretty sure what the words all wee, as nothing else really meant anything that seemed like an action. I think BANGER could have been a big red herring if I hadn’t guessed the “frankfurter” category as quickly as I did. After all, I think BANGER, BOP, and HIT could all very easily be in a category together without blinking an eye. However, because that was already gone, it was much easier to see KNOCK and TAP and understand what they were going for.

Blue Answers: Revealed & Explained

Once I got here, I was worried I was about to get stuck as I was no longer sure of the rest of the words. I focused on CONTRABASS for a while, thinking it might go with OPERA. However, I saw CHROME and SAFARI close to each other, and it clicked for me (pun intended). Then I was able to get EDGE and OPERA, which was lucky because I had not actually heard of OPERA until this year, so I wouldn’t have gotten it if I played this puzzle sooner.

Purple Answers: Revealed & Explained

This last one I would have never gotten. Now that I know what it is, I still would not have gotten it. I might have based on the fact that there just weren’t enough strange or long enough words to go in this category. But I haven’t heard of half of these brands, even when I have walked through the right aisle at the grocery store. I felt better when I saw that many of them were foreign brands, but I did live in Milwaukee for awhile so I would have thought I would have heard of more.

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