NYT Connections #493 was the puzzle for Wednesday, October 16, 2024. Need a nudge? The groups involve future-time expressions, tournament terminology, breakfast cereal pieces, and meanings of the two-finger V sign. Full answers are below.
NYT Connections #493 was published on Wednesday, October 16, 2024. The four groups are AT SOME FUTURE POINT, PARTS OF A TOURNAMENT SETUP, BIT OF BREAKFAST CEREAL, and WHAT THE OUTSTRETCHED INDEX AND MIDDLE FINGERS CAN REPRESENT.
The 16 words in Connections #493
Here is the original grid without the answers grouped:
- PEACE
- PEBBLE
- LATER
- SCISSORS
- ROUND
- CHEERIO
- BYE
- FLAKE
- NEXT
- BRACKET
- SOON
- SEED
- VICTORY
- PUFF
- TWO
- EVENTUALLY
Hints for NYT Connections #493
Use these clues in order if you want help without immediately seeing the full solution.
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- Yellow hint: Think of expressions describing a time after now or at an unspecified later date.
- Green hint: These are components or terms used when organizing a competition or tournament.
- Blue hint: These can describe a small piece or shape of breakfast cereal.
- Purple hint: The outstretched index and middle fingers can communicate several meanings or symbols.
Connections #493 answers for October 16, 2024
Here are the complete answers, organized by the puzzle’s color groups.
Yellow: AT SOME FUTURE POINT
- EVENTUALLY
- LATER
- NEXT
- SOON
Each word points to a time after the present. They are not identical in precision: soon usually suggests the near future, while eventually leaves the timing much less specific. Next can refer to the following event or period, and later simply places something after now.
Green: PARTS OF A TOURNAMENT SETUP
- BRACKET
- BYE
- ROUND
- SEED
A bracket shows how a tournament is organized. A bye lets a participant advance without playing in a particular round. A round is a stage of the competition, and a seed is a player or team’s ranking or placement in the draw.
Blue: BIT OF BREAKFAST CEREAL
- CHEERIO
- FLAKE
- PEBBLE
- PUFF
Cheerio is the brand-associated entry, while a flake, pebble, or puff can describe the shape or type of an individual piece of cereal. The mix of a recognizable product name and generic food descriptions makes this group less immediately obvious.
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Purple: WHAT THE OUTSTRETCHED INDEX AND MIDDLE FINGERS CAN REPRESENT
- PEACE
- SCISSORS
- TWO
- VICTORY
Holding up the index and middle fingers in a V shape can represent peace or victory, and it can denote the number two. The same two-finger shape is also the hand position for scissors in rock-paper-scissors.
Why this puzzle can be tricky
The tournament group contains ordinary words that can fit many contexts. Round may describe a shape, a boxing match, or a stage of a contest; bye is also a common farewell; and seed has everyday meanings unrelated to sports. Together with bracket, however, they form a precise tournament vocabulary set.
The purple group is more conceptual. Peace, two, and victory do not look like objects at first glance. They become connected when the clue is understood as asking what the V-shaped hand gesture can mean. Scissors supplies the wordplay link to rock-paper-scissors.
The cereal group creates another kind of distraction by combining Cheerio, which resembles a product name, with words that describe cereal pieces. A practical solving path is to spot the tournament terms first, then the future-time words, leaving the cereal and hand-sign groups for the final two categories.
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How NYT Connections works
Connections presents 16 words. The objective is to divide them into four groups of four, with each group sharing a connection. You can select four words and submit them as a group. The puzzle allows mistakes, but incorrect guesses consume attempts, so it is useful to look for a complete and specific category rather than a loose association.
The groups are color-coded by typical difficulty: Yellow is generally the easiest, followed by Green, Blue, and Purple, which is usually the most wordplay-heavy. Connections is available through NYT Games on the web and supported apps.
Want more puzzles?
If you enjoy the category-matching format away from a screen, the official New York Times Connections puzzle book offers Connections puzzles in print. It is an optional offline follow-up, not something required to solve archived puzzle #493; check the edition’s contents before buying if you are looking for a particular puzzle.
Date and puzzle-number note
This article is about Wednesday, October 16, 2024, and puzzle #493. The word “Today” in some search titles can be misleading because this is an archived answer guide, not the current daily puzzle. The following day, October 17, 2024, was puzzle #494, which matches the date and numbering sequence.
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Frequently Asked Questions
When was NYT Connections #493 published?
NYT Connections #493 was published on Wednesday, October 16, 2024. It is an archived puzzle, not the current daily Connections game.
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What were the categories in Connections #493?
The four categories are AT SOME FUTURE POINT; PARTS OF A TOURNAMENT SETUP; BIT OF BREAKFAST CEREAL; and WHAT THE OUTSTRETCHED INDEX AND MIDDLE FINGERS CAN REPRESENT.
What are the answers to NYT Connections #493?
The words are EVENTUALLY, LATER, NEXT, SOON; BRACKET, BYE, ROUND, SEED; CHEERIO, FLAKE, PEBBLE, PUFF; and PEACE, SCISSORS, TWO, VICTORY.
The Bottom Line
NYT Connections #493, from Wednesday, October 16, 2024, groups the words into future-time expressions, tournament terms, cereal pieces, and meanings of the two-finger V sign.
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