NYT Connections Hints and Answers for Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2026 (#1234): Ear Parts and Two Bell Groups

Today’s Connections from The New York Times (NYT) is puzzle #1234, for Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2026, edited by Wyna Liu. One group is about fooling around with something, another is parts of the ear, and two groups share the word bell, one with the blank before it and one with the blank after it. Below are two levels of hints for each color, then the full solution and an explanation of the overlaps in a marked spoiler section.

Today’s 16 words

Anvil, Bottoms, Canal, Diving, Drum, Fiddle, Jar, Jingle, Liberty, Meddle, Pepper, Stirrup, Taco, Tinker, Tower, Trifle

How the game works

Sort the 16 entries into four groups of four. You can make four mistakes. The groups run from yellow to green, blue and purple, with purple the group that depends most on wordplay.

Hints for each group

Yellow

• Hint 1: Ways of handling something without taking it seriously.
• Hint 2: Four verbs that often come before “with,” as in playing around with a thing you are not meant to touch.

Green

• Hint 1: Pieces of one part of the body, the part you hear with.
• Hint 2: One is a tube-like passage, one shares its name with an instrument, and two share names with objects from a workshop or a saddle.

Blue

• Hint 1: Each word can come right before the word bell.
• Hint 2: Think of a holiday song, a restaurant chain, a symbol of freedom and gear used underwater.

Purple

• Hint 1: Each word can come right after the word bell.
• Hint 2: Flared trousers, a spicy or sweet vegetable, a tall structure that holds a bell, and a glass container with a lid.

Solving tips

Start with green, because the ear theme is clear and it holds the two words most likely to mislead you. Treat the two bell groups as one problem: decide for each word whether bell goes before it or after it. Leave yellow for last, since its four verbs are close in meaning and easy to mix up.

Keep a streak log on our printable weekly calendar or the October 2026 printable calendar.

More of today’s puzzles: Wordle hints, Strands hints and Pips hints.

Today’s Connections answers (spoilers)

Stop here if you still want to solve it yourself.

• Yellow, Mess (With): Fiddle, Meddle, Tinker, Trifle
• Green, Parts of the Ear: Anvil, Canal, Drum, Stirrup
• Blue, ___ Bell: Diving, Jingle, Liberty, Taco
• Purple, Bell ___: Bottoms, Jar, Pepper, Tower

Why the traps worked

Two bell groups. Bell is not a tile, and it sits in two groups on opposite sides of the blank. Diving bell, Jingle Bell, Liberty Bell and Taco Bell put the word after the answer. Bell Bottoms, Bell Jar, Bell Pepper and Bell Tower put it before.

Drum and Anvil. Read alone, Drum looks like an instrument and Anvil looks like a tool. Here they sit with Canal and Stirrup as parts of the ear.

We checked the solution against the puzzle’s official data before posting. Puzzle #1235 arrives at midnight.