Here are today’s Connections hints and answers for NYT Connections No. 1,217 on Saturday, Oct. 10, 2026. This puzzle was pretty average, I thought, although at first I mixed up some of the yellow and green answers. In the purple group, one of the words didn’t even seem like a word to me, but I eventually got it. We’ll give you a hint for each color group first, then reveal today’s Connections answers further down.

Today’s Connections hints

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: College students need to know this.

Green group hint: I would guess or assume.

Blue group hint: Think Facebook or Instagram.

Purple group hint: Muhammad Ali

Read more: We Need to Talk About That Doggone Connections Puzzle

Today’s Connections answers

Yellow group: Useful when writing a paper.

Green group: Presume.

Blue group: Social media sections.

Purple group: ____ boxing.

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

What are today’s Connections answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is useful when writing a paper.

The four answers are draft, notes, outline and thesis.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is presume.

The four answers are figure, gather, imagine and suppose.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is social media sections.

The four answers are feed, messages, notifications and profile.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is ____ boxing.

The four answers are beat, kick, shadow and un.

Let’s talk about today’s Connections

Today’s Connections was tricky. I kept trying to put outline and figure together, thinking those were both words that described working on something but not quite finishing it. I was kind of close, the yellow group heading of “useful when writing a paper” was sort of what I had in mind, but “figure” didn’t end up in that group. And I kept reading un as UN, like the United Nations! But nope, it was a prefix for “unboxing.”

How to play Connections

In Connections, you look at a grid of 16 words and pick four words that have a connection to one another. You do this four times until all 16 words in the puzzle are grouped. The tough part is that Times puzzle editor Wyna Liu chooses words that could fit in multiple groups. The obvious guess — hey, those are four animals! — is almost always going to be wrong. I’ve compiled my favorite tips for Connections if you need a boost.

The Times has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric score and to have the program analyze your answers. Players who are registered with the Times Games section can nerd out by following their progress, including the number of puzzles completed, win rate, number of times they nabbed a perfect score and their win streak.

CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, 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’s been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She’s Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she’ll be first in line.

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