Here are graduated hints for the Friday, November 7, 2025, NYT Connections puzzle, followed by its categories and complete solution. Stop at any point if you want to keep solving. TechRadar’s dated guide identifies this puzzle as game #880; the date is the clearest way to identify it.
Hints for Friday, November 7
Try each clue before moving to the next. The answers follow below.
- Repeated design.
- Flavorings with the same color.
- Something missing in the center.
- The hardest color in common.
Categories
Ready for the category names? The four groups are:
- Textile patterns
- Green condiments
- Things with holes in the middle
- Things that are purple
Answers
These are the four sets of tiles listed in TechRadar’s guide for November 7:
- Yellow — Textile patterns: ANIMAL PRINT, HERRINGBONE, HOUNDSTOOTH, POLKA DOT
- Green — Green condiments: CHIMICHURRI, PESTO, RELISH, SALSA VERDE
- Blue — Things with holes in the middle: BAGEL, HULA HOOP, INNER TUBE, WASHER
- Purple — Things that are purple: BARNEY THE DINOSAUR, EGGPLANT, PEOPLE EATER, SWING STATE
Why the groups can be tricky
Color and category overlap
Some tiles invite more than one association, which can make a plausible grouping distracting. TechRadar’s contributor says they initially considered POLKA DOT for the purple set, even though it belongs with the textile patterns.
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Green depends on the item
The guide’s contributor notes that RELISH and PESTO are not exclusively green in the UK. In this puzzle, they fit the green-condiment group alongside CHIMICHURRI and SALSA VERDE.
“Purple” has a US political meaning
SWING STATE refers to a state that can shift between major parties in US elections; “purple” evokes a mix of the parties’ commonly associated colors. That is the link placing it with BARNEY THE DINOSAUR, EGGPLANT, and PEOPLE EATER.
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How Connections works
Connections asks players to group four items that share a connection. The colors indicate different difficulty levels, and players can make up to four mistakes. TechRadar describes it as playable through NYT Games on desktop or mobile. The puzzle’s grouping format also fits the word-classification task discussed in a 2024 academic paper, though that paper does not verify this particular answer set: arXiv, “NYT-Connections: A Deceptively Simple Text Classification Task that Stumps System-1 Thinkers”.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Sources and puzzle numbering
The hints, categories, answer tiles, and gameplay summary above come from TechRadar’s dated guide, published November 6, 2025. It calls the puzzle #880. A separate archive search result gave a different number, so #880 is attributed to TechRadar rather than presented as independently confirmed by The New York Times.
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