Connections hints and answers: cocktails, “salty” sailors, and today’s tricky color endings

Bassyonni

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Connections hints and answers

Looking for help with Connections? Recent daily grids have leaned hard on two bait-heavy themes—cocktails and seafaring terms—and today’s puzzle adds a neat twist with words that end in colors. Below is a spoiler-managed rundown: light clues first, then full groupings for the most recent games many solvers are asking about.

Today’s Connections hints (Monday, Nov. 24) — gentle nudge

Yellow (easiest): Think small kitchen appliances you’d park on a countertop.
Green: Picture features clustered around a car’s center console.
Blue: Items you see at airport security—from the belt to the scanner.
Purple (spicy): Words that end with another word that’s also a color.

If you want the exact sets, scroll to the “Recent solutions” section.

Why “Sea Breeze / Cosmopolitan / Screwdriver” keeps popping up

Connections loves beverage sets because they double as decoys. A cocktail like Sea Breeze can be mistaken for a weather phrase; Screwdriver can masquerade as a tool. When these appear alongside everyday nouns, group them by drink identity, not surface meaning. Companion entries that often travel with them: Cosmopolitan, Greyhound, and occasionally Salty Dog—which itself can be a cocktail or a sailor slang term, depending on the day’s design.

And what about “salty dog / skipper / swab”?

That quartet screams sailor:

Skipper (captain),
Swab (deckhand; also “to swab the deck”),
TAR (old-timey sailor slang),
Salty Dog (nautical slang that doubles as a cocktail red herring).

Designers sometimes place Salty Dog near drink names to lure you into a wrong grouping early.

Strategy: how to sort cocktail vs. nautical traps

Check part-of-speech behavior. Cocktails act like proper-noun menu items; sailor terms act as roles/people.
Test substitution. “I ordered a ___” fits Screwdriver/Sea Breeze/Cosmopolitan/Greyhound but not Skipper/Swab.
Leave the decoy for last. If a word plausibly fits two groups (e.g., Salty Dog), lock the other three first, then place the swing word.

Recent solutions (spoilers below)

Nov. 24 (today) — Game #897

Small kitchen appliances: BLENDER, TOASTER, MICROWAVE, RICE COOKER
Center-console features: CUP HOLDER, RADIO, AIR CONDITIONER, SHIFTER
Seen at airport security: METAL DETECTOR, X-RAY, BIN, CARRY-ON
Ends with a color: INFRARED (red), ULTRAVIOLET (violet), MARIGOLD (gold), STINGRAY (gray)

Nov. 22 — Game #895

Sailor terms: SALTY DOG, SKIPPER, SWAB, TAR
“Little bit” amounts: DAB, DROP, SPLASH, TOUCH
(Two additional groups rounded out the grid that day; the sailor set above is the one most solvers asked about.)

Nov. 21 — Game #894

Cocktails: COSMOPOLITAN, SCREWDRIVER, SEA BREEZE, GREYHOUND
(That grid also included a wardrobe-adjacent set about items worn on lapels, which many found tricky due to spelling and overlap with jewelry.)

Note on timing: Daily puzzles roll out at midnight local time; if your grid looks different, you may be viewing a different calendar day based on time zone.

Quick tips for Connections streaks

Hunt the “role” set first. Job titles (e.g., Skipper, Swab) are rarely decoys once you see a clear quartet.
Group by locale. Airport, kitchen, classroom, car interior—location-based sets often hide in plain sight.
Decoy discipline. If a word fits two themes, park it until three unambiguous partners emerge.
Shuffle often. A reshuffle can reveal visual clusters you missed.
Color mind games. For “ends with a color” or “starts with a color,” say the color out loud; hearing marigold → gold or stingray → gray helps lock the set.

What to expect next

After cocktails and sailors, recent grids have favored everyday-object clusters (kitchen, car, airport) mixed with a wordplay set (prefix/suffix colors, homophones, or letter patterns). If your starting board includes one or two obvious locales, clear those quickly; save the language-twist category for last when fewer choices remain.

Good luck keeping your streak alive—and if you run into another day where Salty Dog shows up, remember to test both paths: bartender’s menu and sailor’s deck.