By Contributor,Kris Holt

Copyright forbes

How today’s NYT Connections answers and red herrings fit together.

Note: Make sure to complete today’s NYT Connections before reading further! We’ll be getting into spoilers for today’s game pretty quickly. If you need some help to complete the grid, you can find my NYT Connections hints and answers column for today right here.

Hey there, Connectors! I’m trying something new to expand my daily NYT Connections coverage, and I hope you’ll join me on this journey.

Over the last couple of years of playing this game, I’ve heard from many people who have expressed frustration over the game. This could be due to requiring specific cultural knowledge to understand a category or because a purple category got truly wild (I’m definitely with you there).

Since The New York Times is an American publication, the game naturally skews toward Americanisms and American culture. But NYT Connections has a global audience, and many of the game’s fans aren’t necessarily going to clock all the references. As a non-American, I sometimes feel that frustration too. I still don’t really know what Peeps are, for instance, and I’ve definitely tried them.

So, I thought it would be helpful to put together a secondary daily column to take a deeper dive into the NYT Connections answers, and hopefully shed some light on what everything means. I’m planning to go through any red herrings I spot as well, but some are going to slip by me.

If I missed any red herrings or misunderstood something, let me know by email, or via Bluesky or Discord message. I don’t typically look at X or check the comments here.

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I try my best to get all my facts straight. However, there will sometimes be cultural references I don’t fully understand. I’ll correct any errors as swiftly as possible.

I’m going to assume that a) you know how to play NYT Connections and b) you’ve already beaten today’s game. We’re going to go straight into spoiler territory here.

Here are today’s NYT Connections answers (and any red herrings I spot) for Wednesday, October 1 explained:

Today’s NYT Connections Answers Explained

NYT Connections – Yellow Group

🟨 fast-moving water: CATERACT, CURRENT, RAPIDS, WHIRLPOOL

A CURRENT is simply the flow of water in a given direction. In a stream or river, a current is typically determined by gravity. Currents are also found in the ocean, and are affected by tides, winds and the rotation of the Earth.

To that end, where a river bed has a steep gradient, RAPIDS can occur. This is where you see increased turbulence and water speed. Other factors, like rocks and how narrow the stream is, can affect the flow and velocity of rapids.

When opposing currents clash or one meets an obstacle, a WHIRLPOOL can form. Here’s a cool one off the coast of my homeland:

A whirlpool can also be caused by a CATERACT, which is a large, powerful waterfall. Think of Niagara Falls, the Denmark Strait cataract and Iguazu Falls:

NYT Connections – Green Group

🟩 criticize: FLAME, KNOCK, SKEWER, SLAM

To FLAME someone is to send them an insult via the internet. Please don’t do that to me 🙂

KNOCK is more of a Britishism in this context. It typically refers to criticizing someone unfairly i.e. don’t knock me for attempting this new thing and overexplaining because I’m trying not to assume anyone’s level of knowledge!

SKEWERing has some ties with satire or parody, I’d say. It means to criticize or joke about someone or something, typically in an unflattering way, but keeping things rooted in truth or accuracy. Think of the kind of humor of The Daily Show or the excellent comedian Josh Johnson.

SLAM, here, is a bit more straightforward. It just means to criticize i.e. “the critics slammed the movie.”

NYT Connections – Blue Group

🟦 echoey places: CANYON, HALLWAY, TUNNEL, ZOOM CALL

This is a fun one! CANYON, HALLWAY and TUNNEL are all cavernous locations in which acoustic waves bounce back toward the listener. This can happen multiple times, resulting in a reverberation.

The inclusion of ZOOM CALL here is pretty funny. It refers to hearing echoes of other people on audio conferencing calls. Most often this is because someone’s voice comes through a participant’s speaker, and is picked up again by the latter’s microphone.

Just wear earphones or headphones, folks! Your colleagues will thank you for it. Mute your microphone if you aren’t talking as well. Please.

ZOOM CALL echoes can also occur when people join a call with multiple devices. In addition, it can happen when more than one person in the same physical room is on the same call.

NYT Connections – Purple Group

🟪 _____ prize: BOOBY, DOOR, FIRST, JURY

I really liked this group as well.

A BOOBY prize is typically a joke award given to someone who finishes in last place. The Six Nations rugby tournament has a version of this. The team that comes in last place receives the Wooden Spoon.

FIRST prize is an interesting one, because it can be either the reward presented to the winner of an event or (in a bit of a misnomer) the secondary prize that’s handed out. In the latter case, the top reward might be dubbed the “grand prize.” No, this never made much sense to me either.

A DOOR prize is a sort of raffle, but tickets are given to participants as they enter a venue. The JURY Prize is one of the awards at the Cannes Film Festival, which is decided – oddly enough – by a jury.

NYT Connections Red Herrings

Connections often has some red herrings. Let’s take a look at today’s (assuming I spotted any).
SSPL via Getty Images

I didn’t catch any red herrings this time. If you spotted any, let me know, and I’ll update this column when I can.

That’s it for this first edition of this extra column! I always appreciate any feedback, so if you liked this, didn’t like it or have suggestions, please let me know.

If you’d like to chat about today’s game of NYT Connections with a group of exceptionally cool and lovely people and also me, you can do just that in our Discord community. We’d love to have you join us.

I’ll be back with another set of NYT Connections hints and answers tomorrow, as well as another edition of this one, all going well. You’ll be able to find both of those on my Forbes author page when the time comes (following me there helps me out too!). As for the weekend editions of my NYT Connections hints and answers column, I’m currently doing that via my newsletter, Pastimes.

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