The New York Times Connections
The New York Times Connections

NEW YORK — Tuesday's New York Times Connections puzzle, No. 1234, centered on a single word: bell. Two of the four groups were built around the same word, one with it at the end and one with it at the start, which made for a clever twist.

Hints come first for players who want a nudge. The full answers follow further down.

How Connections works

Connections shows a grid of 16 words. Players sort them into four groups of four that share a common thread. Each group has a color that signals its difficulty:

Yellow: the most straightforward Green: moderate Blue: harder Purple: the trickiest, often built on wordplay

Players can make four mistakes before the game ends. If a guess gets three of the four words right, the game shows a "One away" message.

Tuesday's 16 words

The grid for Oct. 27, 2026:

FIDDLE, MEDDLE, TINKER, TRIFLE, ANVIL, CANAL, DRUM, STIRRUP, DIVING, JINGLE, LIBERTY, TACO, BOTTOMS, JAR, PEPPER, TOWER

Hints for each group

Yellow: Ways to interfere with something you probably shouldn't touch. Green: Think about how you hear, and what's inside your head that helps you do it. Blue: Each word comes before a common noun that rings. Purple: The same noun, but this time it comes first.

Forbes puzzle columnist Kris Holt offered hints of his own. For the green group he wrote, "some of these help keep things in balance, ya hear?" For blue he wrote, "like lake, kristen and tinker," a playful nod to Lake Bell, actor Kristen Bell and the fairy Tinker Bell.

The red herrings

The puzzle's biggest trap was TINKER, which fit two groups. It works as a verb meaning to fiddle with something, but it also forms "Tinker Bell," which pointed toward the blue group. Its real home was in yellow.

ANVIL and STIRRUP could look like blacksmith or horse-riding terms, while DRUM and CANAL might seem to belong with music or waterways. In fact, all four are parts of the human ear.

The two bell groups also overlapped in a sneaky way. Solvers had to work out which words come before "bell" and which come after it.

Holt said the starting points were clear for him. "TINKER and FIDDLE clued me into the yellows, then TACO and LIBERTY did the same for the blues," he wrote.

On the purple group, which became clear once PEPPER and JAR were in place, Holt praised the constructor. "I enjoyed that," he wrote. He added that "the greens wrapped up my 604th win in a row."

Today's Connections answers

Yellow — MESS (WITH): FIDDLE, MEDDLE, TINKER, TRIFLE

All four mean to interfere with or handle something carelessly.

Green — PARTS OF THE EAR: ANVIL, CANAL, DRUM, STIRRUP

The anvil (incus) and stirrup (stapes) are tiny bones in the middle ear. The ear canal carries sound inward, and the eardrum vibrates in response.

Blue — **_ BELL:** DIVING, JINGLE, LIBERTY, TACO

Add "bell" to the end of each: diving bell, jingle bell, Liberty Bell and Taco Bell.

Purple — BELL **_:** BOTTOMS, JAR, PEPPER, TOWER

Add "bell" to the start of each: bell-bottoms, bell jar, bell pepper and bell tower.

Solving tips

Regular Connections players often use a few strategies:

Watch for words that fit two groups. TINKER was Tuesday's classic decoy. When a word seems to belong in more than one place, set it aside until other groups are solved. Look for repeated themes. When a single word, like "bell," seems to connect several entries, check whether it goes before some words and after others. Use your mistakes wisely. A "One away" message is useful information. Swap one word at a time instead of starting over. Shuffle the board. The shuffle button can break up visual patterns and reveal new links.

On Tuesday, solving the ear-related group early would have cleared out some of the more unusual words. That would have made the two bell categories easier to separate.

Other New York Times games

Connections is part of the Times' daily lineup alongside Wordle, Strands, Spelling Bee and The Mini Crossword. The Times also publishes Connections: Sports Edition, a separate puzzle built around athletes, teams and sports terms.

The Wordle answer for Tuesday, Oct. 27, was BINGO.

A new Connections puzzle is released every day at midnight local time.