Today's Connections Hints & Answers For October 5, 2024 (Puzzle #481)

If you struggle to dissect today’s puzzle, you might need to re-examine your guesswork to ensure you are headed in the right direction. This often happens when you are trying to analyze the words as if you were x-raying them, and for me, this also means I happen to overthink the puzzle and guess wrong. To avoid that blunder, check out these hints and tricks to improve your puzzling day.

If you like and still want to do more puzzling, you should try out the daily puzzle. It is a smaller portion of the traditional crossword with the same clues you are familiar with. This makes it a fun puzzle to solve in a short amount of time, which makes it easier and less frustrating. Once you have completed it, you can add another victory to your day and feel good about your streak.

After you have looked over and maybe tried a guess or two of your own on today’s puzzle, you may have come here in search of some hints. We have some for you that should help you evaluate the categories and do some deductive reasoning. Today’s puzzle has some odd words in the last two categories, and it can be hard to separate them out, which is what these clues are for.

The Letter Boxed game for the New York Times mobile app asks you to connect letters to form words while using various strategies to win quickly.

Once you have looked at the clues, you can evaluate whether you need more help or not. If you decide you do, we have all the category names ready and waiting in the table below.

STEAK CUTS

KINDS OF UNDERWEAR

INVOLVED IN A DENTIST VISIT

BRANDS THAT HAVE BECOME GENERIC TERMS

STEAK CUTS

FILET

HANGER

SKIRT

T-BONE

This category’s most popular words include T-BONE and FILET, which are also the biggest signposting as to what the category might be. I also had heard of a SKIRT steak before, but I had to figure out what the last one was. I had already solved the next category, and I was pretty sure none of the other words were steak options. Luckily, this meant I was able to guess HANGER fairly