Connections Hint and Answers Today (#1231, October 24, 2026)

Today’s NYT Connections puzzle, #1231 for Saturday, October 24, 2026, is a weekend board built on long thin things, things on sticks, and one deliciously annoying vocabulary check in the middle. The yellow group falls fast once you see the shared shape, the green group is a trip to the county fair, the blue group demands you know an industry term you have definitely closed a thousand times without naming, and the purple group is a fill-in-the-blank wordplay finish. If your mistakes are running low, work through the category hints below in order, from yellow to purple, and only scroll to the full answers when you are ready. Each hint spoils a little more than the one before it.

Today’s 16 words

Here is the full board for puzzle #1231:

  • BACON
  • BANNER
  • CANDY
  • COMIC
  • FILM
  • HOBBY HORSE
  • INTERSTITIAL
  • MÖBIUS
  • OVERLAY
  • PINWHEEL
  • POP-UP
  • POPSICLE
  • SALAD
  • SPACE
  • SPARKLER
  • SPORTS

Category hints (no answers yet)

Work through these in order. Yellow is the group Connections intends to be the most straightforward, and purple is the trickiest.

Yellow hint

Look for a long, narrow shape that shows up in food, in cartoons, on a projector, and in geometry class. Four of today’s words all come in that form.

Green hint

Think of the county fair. Four of today’s words are things you hold by a stick, wave around, or watch twirl on a pole.

Blue hint

Picture everything you have ever closed, skipped, or scrolled past online. Four of today’s words are the formats advertising takes on the internet. One of them is a ten-plus-letter word that sounds technical because it is.

Purple hint

Say the same familiar four-letter word after each leftover word and you will land on four phrases you already know, from your keyboard to the concession stand. These four words each want the same ending.

Spoiler warning

Stop here if you want to keep solving on your own. The complete solved board for Connections #1231, with all four category names and explanations, is directly below.

Today’s Connections answers

Yellow: KINDS OF STRIPS

BACON, COMIC, FILM, MÖBIUS

A strip of bacon, a comic strip, a strip of film, and a Möbius strip, the famous one-sided loop from mathematics. MÖBIUS is the odd one out that actually makes the group, because it is the only word on the board that forces you to think in terms of shapes rather than everyday objects. This is the group most players find first.

Green: THINGS ON STICKS

HOBBY HORSE, PINWHEEL, POPSICLE, SPARKLER

A hobby horse is a stick with a horse head, a pinwheel spins on a stick, a popsicle freezes onto a stick, and a sparkler burns on a stick. The trap here is POPSICLE, which keeps glancing over at POP-UP, and SPARKLER, which feels like it belongs with celebrations rather than fair food. Lock in the four together and the board opens up.

Blue: ONLINE AD FORMATS

BANNER, INTERSTITIAL, OVERLAY, POP-UP

Banner ads, interstitial ads (the full-screen takeovers you have to hunt for the X to close), overlay ads, and pop-up ads. INTERSTITIAL is the vocabulary check of the day: most solvers recognize the other three instantly, but the fourth one demands you actually know the industry term for those whole-screen interruptions. This group rewards anyone who has ever waited out a countdown on a phone screen.

Purple: ___ BAR

CANDY, SALAD, SPACE, SPORTS

The wordplay finish. Each word takes the same ending: candy bar, salad bar, space bar, sports bar. SPACE is the giveaway once you see it, because it sits on the board looking like pure filler until BAR clicks into place, and then the other three fall in a row. SPORTS does the double duty of looking like it belongs with HOBBY HORSE in an activities group that does not exist.

How the board tried to trick you

Today’s puzzle leans on words that refuse to sit still. BANNER reads as a long strip of cloth until the ad group claims it, COMIC pulls toward funny pages instead of long thin strips, and POP-UP and POPSICLE keep pairing off as a tempting false couple across two different groups. The blue group is the real streak-killer: INTERSTITIAL looks like it wandered in from a vocabulary test, and if you cannot name the fourth ad format, the whole group stays invisible. Solving yellow and green early is the key, because once the strips and the sticks leave the grid, the internet ads and the BAR words have nowhere left to hide.

Yesterday’s Connections answers

If you missed yesterday’s game, Connections #1230 on October 23, 2026 grouped FORTHRIGHT (DIRECT, FRANK, OPEN, VOCAL), THINGS YOU INSTALL ON A COMPUTER (DRIVER, EXTENSION, PLUGIN, UPDATE), QUANTITIES IN A FORMULA FOR POWER (DISTANCE, FORCE, POWER, TIME), and ___ TAP (DOUBLE, LOVE, PHONE, SPINAL).

Tips for tomorrow’s puzzle

  • Chase the compound words first. SPACE BAR, CANDY BAR, and HOBBY HORSE all beg for a partner word. Finding one half of a compound usually cracks the whole group.
  • Read every word twice. BANNER as a strip of cloth versus an ad format is today’s lesson: the puzzle rewards the second reading.
  • Isolate the weird one. When a word like MÖBIUS or INTERSTITIAL sticks out, build around it instead of ignoring it. Odd words are usually load-bearing.
  • Beware the obvious couple. If two words look like they obviously belong together, like POP-UP and POPSICLE, at least one of them belongs somewhere else.

Come back tomorrow

Connections resets at midnight local time, and we will have hints and answers for #1232 here tomorrow. Good luck with the board.