Connections Hint and Answers Today (#1236, October 29, 2026)
Today’s NYT Connections puzzle, #1236 for Thursday, October 29, 2026, is a friendly board with one group that rewards pure general knowledge and one purple group that rewards counting rather than guessing. The easy group falls quickly once you picture spare change, the middle two reward anyone who spots a familiar pattern early, and the hardest group is a counting puzzle hiding in plain sight. 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 #1236:
- ANTARCTICA
- CALICO
- CANDY CORN
- EMPEROR
- GOTHIC
- NEAPOLITAN
- PARKING METER
- PAYPHONE
- PIGGY BANK
- ROMAN
- SANS
- TRAFFIC LIGHT
- TUXEDO
- TYPEWRITER
- WADDLE
- WISHING WELL
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 about where spare change ends up when you drop it through a slot. Four of today’s words name places or objects you feed coins into, whether to pay, to save, or to make a wish.
Green hint
Picture a flightless bird that looks dressed for a formal dinner. Four of today’s words are tied to that bird: where it lives, its largest species, what its coloring resembles, and how it walks.
Blue hint
Consider how the names of famous typefaces often finish. Four of today’s words are the final chunk of a well-known font name. Say each one after a famous first word and the font should appear.
Purple hint
Count the hues. Four of today’s words name things that each feature exactly three colors: a certain cat, a Halloween treat, an ice cream flavor, and a street signal. If a word on the board feels colorful, it probably belongs here.
Spoiler warning
Stop here if you want to keep solving on your own. The complete solved board for Connections #1236, with all four category names and explanations, is directly below.
Today’s Connections answers
Yellow: THINGS YOU PUT COINS INTO
PARKING METER, PAYPHONE, PIGGY BANK, WISHING WELL
You feed coins into a parking meter to buy time and into a payphone to pay for a call. You drop coins into a piggy bank to save them and toss them into a wishing well for luck. This is the group most players find first, and locking it in early clears the board nicely.
Green: ASSOCIATED WITH PENGUINS
ANTARCTICA, EMPEROR, TUXEDO, WADDLE
Penguins live in Antarctica, and the emperor is the largest penguin species. Their black and white coloring looks like a tuxedo, and they famously waddle when they walk. The traps here are EMPEROR, which could point toward royalty in another puzzle, and TUXEDO, which reads as formal wear until the penguin link clicks.
Blue: ENDS OF FAMOUS FONTS
GOTHIC, ROMAN, SANS, TYPEWRITER
Each word completes a well-known font name: Century Gothic, Times New Roman, Comic Sans, and American Typewriter. This group rewards players who read the words as endings rather than standalone ideas. ROMAN is the sneakiest member, because it also suggests history and empires, which pulls attention away from the font pattern.
Purple: THINGS THAT FEATURE THREE COLORS
CALICO, CANDY CORN, NEAPOLITAN, TRAFFIC LIGHT
The counting group. A calico cat is white, black, and orange. Candy corn is yellow, orange, and white. Neapolitan ice cream comes in chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry. A traffic light shows red, yellow, and green. Once you start counting colors instead of looking for a shared topic, this group falls into place fast.
How the board tried to trick you
Today’s puzzle leans on words with strong everyday meanings that hide their group membership. EMPEROR suggests a ruler, TUXEDO suggests a wedding, and ROMAN suggests an empire, yet all three belong to pattern groups instead. SANS looks like a fragment on its own, which is exactly the clue for the font group once you pair it with Comic. The board rewards players who solve the coins group early, because once those four words leave the grid, the penguin cluster stands out much more clearly, and the leftover words start to read as font endings and three-color items.
Tips for tomorrow’s puzzle
- Say the words out loud. Purple groups often hide sounds, fragments, and word endings that your eyes skip over.
- Look for words that feel incomplete. A word like SANS, sitting oddly on the board, is often the tail end of something bigger.
- 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 #1237 here tomorrow. Good luck with the board.
