Connections Hint and Answers Today (#1235, October 28, 2026)
Good morning, puzzlers. Today is Wednesday, October 28, 2026, and Connections #1235 is a board built around double meanings. The yellow group is a gentle warm-up about feelings, the green group rewards anyone who thinks about the parts of a message, the blue group rewards a little space knowledge, and the purple group is pure wordplay that only clicks when you say the words out loud. Work through the hints below in order, one group at a time, and only scroll to the spoiler section when you are ready to see the full solved board.
Today’s 16 words
Here is the full board for Connections #1235, in no particular order: CURIOSITY, ROUT, SUBJECT, ATTRACTION, ATTACHMENT, SPIRIT, BODY, COARSE, CRUSH, WEIGH, SIGNATURE, INTEREST, RODE, OPPORTUNITY, FEELINGS, PERSEVERANCE.
Gentle hints: one word from each group
Start here. Each clue below names a single word and the color of its group, nothing more. If one of them clicks, the rest of that group usually follows.
- Yellow word: CRUSH belongs to the yellow group.
- Green word: SUBJECT belongs to the green group.
- Blue word: CURIOSITY belongs to the blue group.
- Purple word: COARSE belongs to the purple group.
Stronger hints: what each group is about
Still stuck? Here is a description of each group’s theme, without naming the groups outright.
- Yellow theme: Words for being drawn to someone, that warm fluttery feeling that might lead to dating.
- Green theme: Parts of a message you send online, things you fill in or attach before you press send.
- Blue theme: Names of robotic explorers sent to another planet, famous rovers that share one red destination.
- Purple theme: Words that sound like words for ways through, paths and routes, when you say them out loud.
Even closer: the four group names
One last nudge before the reveal. The four groups for Connections #1235 are:
- Yellow: ROMANTIC LIKING
- Green: COMPONENTS OF AN EMAIL
- Blue: NASA MARS ROVERS
- Purple: HOMOPHONES OF PATHS
If the group names alone do not finish the board, say the purple words aloud. That single trick separates the sound-alike group from the rest of the board cleanly.
Spoiler warning
Stop scrolling here if you do not want the answers. The full solved board for Connections #1235 is directly below. This is your last chance to go back and use the hints on your own board first.
Today’s Connections answers
- Yellow, ROMANTIC LIKING: ATTRACTION, CRUSH, FEELINGS, INTEREST
- Green, COMPONENTS OF AN EMAIL: ATTACHMENT, BODY, SIGNATURE, SUBJECT
- Blue, NASA MARS ROVERS: CURIOSITY, OPPORTUNITY, PERSEVERANCE, SPIRIT
- Purple, HOMOPHONES OF PATHS: COARSE, RODE, ROUT, WEIGH
How each group works
Yellow, ROMANTIC LIKING. ATTRACTION, CRUSH, FEELINGS, and INTEREST are all words for being drawn to someone. You feel an attraction, you have a crush, you catch feelings, and you take an interest. INTEREST is the quiet trap here: it can mean curiosity about anything, but in this puzzle it belongs with the romance words.
Green, COMPONENTS OF AN EMAIL. Every email has a SUBJECT line, a BODY where the message lives, an ATTACHMENT if you add a file, and a SIGNATURE at the end. ATTACHMENT is the big trap word on this board: it can mean an emotional bond, which points toward the yellow group, but here it means a file attached to a message.
Blue, NASA MARS ROVERS. CURIOSITY, OPPORTUNITY, PERSEVERANCE, and SPIRIT are all NASA rovers that explored Mars. Curiosity is still roaming, Perseverance landed in 2021, and Spirit and Opportunity were the twin rovers of the earlier Mars Exploration Rover mission. SPIRIT is the other trap: it can mean a mood or a ghost, but here it is a machine on another planet.
Purple, HOMOPHONES OF PATHS. COARSE sounds like course, RODE sounds like road, ROUT sounds like route, and WEIGH sounds like way. Each sound-alike is a word for a path or a way through. This is the hardest group because none of the four words looks like a path on paper. The connection only appears when you hear them.
Why today’s board was tricky
The crossover trap is the whole puzzle. ATTACHMENT sits between the yellow and green groups, INTEREST sits between romance and general curiosity, and SPIRIT sits between a feeling and a rover. A solver who groups by the first meaning of each word ends up with a pile of feelings words that includes ATTACHMENT, and a pile of space words that is missing SPIRIT. The fix is to test the most specific reading of a word first. When a word has a technical meaning, an email attachment or a Mars rover, that meaning is usually the intended one, because everyday readings are the decoys. The purple group adds a second layer: it cannot be solved by meaning at all, only by sound. Saying the last four words aloud is not a gimmick here, it is the actual solving step.
Yesterday’s Connections answers
If you missed yesterday’s game, Connections #1234 on October 27, 2026 solved as: Yellow, MESS (WITH), with FIDDLE, MEDDLE, TINKER, and TRIFLE; Green, PARTS OF THE EAR, with ANVIL, CANAL, DRUM, and STIRRUP; Blue, ___ BELL, with DIVING, JINGLE, LIBERTY, and TACO; and Purple, BELL ___, with BOTTOMS, JAR, PEPPER, and TOWER.
Tips for tomorrow’s puzzle
- Start with the easiest group. Clearing yellow first removes four words and makes the remaining groups much easier to see.
- Test the technical meaning first. If a word has a specialist sense, try that reading before the everyday one. Puzzle makers love hiding a category behind a familiar word.
- Say the purple words aloud. Homophone groups are invisible on paper and obvious out loud. When a group will not form, read the leftover words to yourself.
- Use your mistakes. Connections tells you when you are one word away. That near-miss is valuable information: three of the four are right, so swap only the odd one out.
- Save purple for last. The purple group is usually the wordplay group, and it gets far easier once the other twelve words are gone.
Come back tomorrow
A new Connections board goes live at midnight in your own time zone, and we will have fresh hints and the full solved board for #1236 here as soon as it lands. Good luck, and may your first four groups be clean ones.
