Connections #1249 Hints & Answers Today, November 11, 2026

Connections #1249 is the Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2026, puzzle from The New York Times, edited by Wyna Liu. Four of today’s tiles could each go before the word tea, and the rules on our Connections page show why a hunch like that costs a guess when it is wrong. Here are two hints per color, followed by the answers in a marked section.

Today’s 16 words

Shredder, Herbal, Patoot, Whoopie Cushion, Green, Folk, Bubble, Rough, Afternoon, Rheostats, Traditional, Tire, Sand Trap, Holistic, Air Mattress, Tee Box

Hints for each group

Yellow

• Hint 1

  Each describes a way of treating illness, often outside a hospital.
• Hint 2

  One looks at the whole person instead of a single symptom; one relies on leaves, roots and plant extracts.
• Reveal the yellow group

  Kinds of Medicine: Folk, Herbal, Holistic, Traditional

Green

• Hint 1

  Play 18 holes and you will cross each of these spots.
• Hint 2

  One is the long grass bordering the fairway; one is where every hole begins.
• Reveal the green group

  Parts of a Golf Course: Green, Rough, Sand Trap, Tee Box

Blue

• Hint 1

  Each one goes flat or pops once it loses what is inside.
• Hint 2

  One is a prank cushion that makes a silly noise when you sit; one is the rubber ring around a car wheel.
• Reveal the blue group

  Things Filled with Air: Air Mattress, Bubble, Tire, Whoopie Cushion

Purple

• Hint 1

  Look at the last letters of each one; they read the same left to right and right to left.
• Hint 2

  One ends with a short word for statistics; one ends with a word meaning more red.
• Reveal the purple group

  Ending in Palindromes: Afternoon, Patoot, Rheostats, Shredder

Solving tips

Show the solving tips

The golf course is the cleanest place to start, since its tiles mean little outside the game. Then move on to the things you inflate.

Tea is the trap. Four tiles make a tea phrase, and they are spread across all four colors, so a tea guess will fail. For purple, read each remaining tile backward from its end.

Our printable weekly calendar has room for a streak count each day, and the November 2026 printable calendar fits the whole month on one page.

Midweek companions: Wordle hints, Strands hints and Pips hints.

Today’s Connections answers (spoilers)

Here is where the hints end and the solution begins.

• Yellow, Kinds of Medicine

  Folk, Herbal, Holistic, Traditional
• Green, Parts of a Golf Course

  Green, Rough, Sand Trap, Tee Box
• Blue, Things Filled With Air

  Air Mattress, Bubble, Tire, Whoopie Cushion
• Purple, Ending in Palindromes

  Afternoon, Patoot, Rheostats, Shredder

1. Kinds of MedicineFolk, Herbal, Holistic, Traditional
2. Parts of a Golf CourseGreen, Rough, Sand Trap, Tee Box
3. Things Filled With AirAir Mattress, Bubble, Tire, Whoopie Cushion
4. Ending in PalindromesAfternoon, Patoot, Rheostats, Shredder

Why the traps worked

Green, Herbal, Afternoon and Bubble all go in front of tea. One sits in each group, so the tea idea never pays off.

Green has a second pull as a color, and Tee Box sounds like a box of tea when you say it aloud, a pun that only feeds the trap. Folk and Traditional both work as kinds of music as well as medicine, which can send a solver hunting for a song group that is not there.

Decoy map

Entry	Real group	Look-alike group	Why it tempts
Green	Parts of a Golf Course	Kinds of Medicine	Green tea sits on the shelf beside herbal tea.
Afternoon	Ending in Palindromes	A tea phrase (not a group)	Afternoon tea is a whole meal in Britain.
Bubble	Things Filled With Air	A tea phrase (not a group)	Bubble tea is a popular drink.
Tee Box	Parts of a Golf Course	A tea phrase (not a group)	Said aloud, it sounds like a tea box.
Folk	Kinds of Medicine	A music style (not a group)	Folk is a genre, and so is traditional music.

The groups match the official data file saved for this puzzle. Thursday’s grid is #1250.

Yesterday's Connections answer

The four groups in Connections on Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026, easiest to hardest:

• Yellow, Hubbub: Brouhaha, Foofaraw, Hullabaloo, Kerfuffle
• Green, Old-Timey Occupations: Apothecary, Haberdasher, Scrivener, Wainwright
• Blue, Literary Devices: Hyperbole, Metonymy, Onomatopoeia, Oxymoron
• Purple, Words with the Same 5 Vowels as Only Vowels: Abracadabra, Beekeeper, Invisibility, Protozoology

Yesterday's hints and full solution.