Connections Hint and Answers Today (#1248, November 10, 2026)
Today’s NYT Connections puzzle, #1248 for Tuesday, November 10, 2026, is a board full of long, chewy words that reward a sharp ear as much as a feeling for meaning. The easy group falls quickly once you spot the theme, the middle two reward anyone who thinks about books and old trades, and the purple group hides its answer in the letters themselves, in a pattern you can count on your fingers. If you are stuck with mistakes running low, use 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 #1248:
- ABRACADABRA
- APOTHECARY
- BEEKEEPER
- BROUHAHA
- FOOFARAW
- HABERDASHER
- HULLABALOO
- HYPERBOLE
- INVISIBILITY
- KERFUFFLE
- METONYMY
- ONOMATOPOEIA
- OXYMORON
- PROTOZOOLOGY
- SCRIVENER
- WAINWRIGHT
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
Think of a noisy fuss, the kind of uproar that erupts over something small. Four of today’s words name that kind of commotion, each one sounding almost as chaotic as the thing it describes.
Green hint
Open an English textbook and look at the chapter on style. Four of today’s words name tricks of language that writers use, from exaggeration to a word that sounds like what it describes.
Blue hint
Step back a century or two and look at the shop signs on an old street. Four of today’s words name jobs that have mostly vanished, from the person who mixed medicines to the person who built wagons.
Purple hint
Forget what the words mean and count their letters instead. Four of today’s words each contain five copies of one single vowel, a different vowel in each word, and that counting pattern is the whole link.
Spoiler warning
Stop here if you want to keep solving on your own. The complete solved board for Connections #1248, with all four category names and explanations, is directly below.
Today’s Connections answers
Yellow: HUBBUB
BROUHAHA, FOOFARAW, HULLABALOO, KERFUFFLE
Four words for a noisy commotion or fuss. A brouhaha is a noisy and overexcited reaction, foofaraw is a great deal of fuss about something unimportant, hullabaloo is a loud uproar, and kerfuffle is a commotion caused by a disagreement. This is the group most players find first, because the four words all sound like a ruckus, and locking it in early clears the board nicely.
Green: LITERARY DEVICES
HYPERBOLE, METONYMY, ONOMATOPOEIA, OXYMORON
Four techniques from the writer’s toolbox. Hyperbole is deliberate exaggeration, metonymy is naming a thing by something closely linked to it, onomatopoeia is a word that imitates the sound it names, and oxymoron is a figure that joins two opposite ideas, like a deafening silence. The trap here is that ONOMATOPOEIA and PROTOZOOLOGY are both very long words, but only one of them belongs with the literary terms.
Blue: OLD-TIMEY OCCUPATIONS
APOTHECARY, HABERDASHER, SCRIVENER, WAINWRIGHT
Four jobs from another century. An apothecary prepared and sold medicines, a haberdasher sold clothing and sewing goods, a scrivener wrote or copied documents by hand, and a wainwright built or repaired wagons. APOTHECARY is the sneakiest word on the board, because it can also mean the shop itself, but here the person meaning is the one that fits the group.
Purple: WORDS WITH FIVE OF ONE VOWEL
ABRACADABRA, BEEKEEPER, INVISIBILITY, PROTOZOOLOGY
The wordplay group. Each word contains exactly five instances of a single vowel: ABRACADABRA has five As, BEEKEEPER has five Es, INVISIBILITY has five Is, and PROTOZOOLOGY has five Os. Count them and the pattern jumps out, but only once you stop reading for meaning and start counting letters instead.
How the board tried to trick you
Today’s puzzle leans on words that are long, loud, and easy to misread. FOOFARAW sits beside the other hubbub words and also tempts players who know its other meaning, a decorative frill, which could send it toward a clothing cluster that does not exist. APOTHECARY looks like it could belong with the literary devices, since it sounds like a word from a book, but it is a job, so it belongs in blue. PROTOZOOLOGY is the longest word on the board and looks like a science term, yet its five Os are what matter, not its meaning. The board rewards players who solve the yellow group early, because once BROUHAHA, FOOFARAW, HULLABALOO, and KERFUFFLE leave the grid, the leftover words split cleanly into books, jobs, and the counting trick.
Tips for tomorrow’s puzzle
- Say the words out loud. Purple groups often hide sounds and word beginnings that your eyes skip over.
- Count the letters. When the words on a board are unusually long, a letter-count pattern is often the purple link.
- Hold your guesses. You only get four mistakes, so test a group in your head against all four words before you submit it.
- Beware the obvious cluster. If five words seem to fit one theme, at least one of them belongs somewhere else.
Connections resets at midnight local time, and we will have hints and answers for #1249 here tomorrow. Good luck with the board.
