This is the archive guide to NYT Connections for Sunday, October 6, 2024, which was puzzle #483. The four groups are four synonyms for leaving, four things cats do, four pages you find on most websites, and four words that come before CHEESE. The answers are further down, so stop after the hints if you want to solve it yourself.
Start with the hints
These hints are spoiler-light. Each one points at a group without naming its words.
- Yellow (easiest): Go away
- Green: Feline things
- Blue: Privacy is often another
- Purple (hardest): Blank [dairy food]
Category labels before the reveal
If the hints did not unlock a group, these category labels are the next step. They name the link between the four words without listing them.
| Colour | Category label |
|---|---|
| Yellow | TURN TAIL |
| Green | THINGS CATS DO |
| Blue | PAGES ON A WEBSITE |
| Purple | ___ CHEESE |
Full answers by group
Yellow: TURN TAIL
The answers are FLEE, LEAVE, RETREAT, WITHDRAW. All four mean to go away or pull back from a place or situation. Because the group is a set of close synonyms, it is the most direct of the four, which fits its yellow colour as the easiest group.
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Green: THINGS CATS DO
The answers are KNEAD, PURR, SCRATCH, SHED. The author of the TechRadar write-up says they first spotted the cat theme from PURR and SCRATCH, and only later saw that SHED, used as a verb for a cat losing fur, completed the set. Solvers who think of SHED as a word for leaving may hesitate here, so this is the group where one word can pull you toward the wrong category.
Blue: PAGES ON A WEBSITE
The answers are ABOUT, CONTACT, HOME, LOGIN. These are standard navigation labels that appear on many sites, so the group is easy to recognise once the category is in view.
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Purple: ___ CHEESE
The answers are COTTAGE, CREAM, GOAT, STRING. Each word completes a familiar type of cheese: cottage cheese, cream cheese, goat cheese and string cheese. The purple colour marks it as the hardest group, because the category depends on a blank that has to be filled by a dairy term.
Where the puzzle can mislead you
Connections is built around overlapping words and wordplay. Several answers have other meanings that can pull a solver into the wrong group:
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- Leaving words in the wrong place: SHED can also mean to leave or get rid of something, so it competes with the yellow group as well as the green one.
- Navigation labels with everyday meanings: HOME and ABOUT are ordinary English words, and HOME can also sit comfortably beside the “leave” group in a solver’s mind.
- Cheese blanks that look like other phrases: STRING and CREAM are common words on their own, so they are easy to file elsewhere before the cheese link is clear.
A reasonable order is to solve the blue and yellow groups first, since their categories are the most self-contained, and leave the green group until SHED is the only word that fits the cat theme.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.About this puzzle and where it appears
NYT Connections gives players sixteen terms to sort into four groups of four words that share a category. The Wikipedia overview of the game describes the four colours as an ordering of difficulty, with yellow the most straightforward and purple the most difficult. That overview is a secondary reference rather than an official New York Times source, so treat it as background on the format.
The puzzle covered here is Sunday, October 6, 2024, game #483. The year matters because other October 6 puzzles exist in other years. The NYT Games site can be played on desktop or mobile. The answers above come from the TechRadar write-up published on October 5, 2024, which covers the same puzzle and its solving context.
- TechRadar, NYT Connections today’s answers and hints for 6 October 2024
- Wikipedia, The New York Times Connections
This page reports the puzzle as published in 2024. It does not track whether later editions of the game changed their rules or colour system.
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