The latest NYT Connections puzzle for October 19, 2025 (#861) has arrived, and it's one of the more creative ones in recent weeks. Players are facing a mix of straightforward themes and clever twists, with the purple group featuring a classic "letter addition" trick. If you're stuck on today's puzzle, here's a full breakdown of hints, answers, group explanations, and helpful strategies to solve it.

Connections is one of The New York Times' most popular daily word games, where you must group 16 words into four sets of four based on shared themes. Each set is color-coded by difficulty, from yellow (easiest) to purple (trickiest). Today's puzzle tests logic, lateral thinking, and a bit of candy knowledge.

Before diving into the answers, here are gentle hints for each group to help you solve the puzzle without giving too much away:

If those clues help you spot patterns, try grouping them on your own. But if you're still stuck, the full solutions are below.

Here are the four correct groups, their shared themes, and the words that belong together:

This group is all about falling or tipping over. The four correct words are:

Each word is a physical part of a book. The correct words are:

All four can follow "out" to describe someone losing control emotionally:

This clever set involves popular chocolate bar names with an extra letter added:

While the yellow and green groups were relatively simple, today's blue and purple groups caused more confusion. The "lose it" group uses slang expressions that might not be immediately obvious, and the purple group requires knowledge of candy brands and wordplay.

This kind of letter manipulation is a hallmark of Connections' tougher puzzles, especially for purple groups. Recognizing "Crunchy" as "Crunch" + "Y" and "Skort" as "Skor" + "T" is key to cracking the code. If you spot a pattern that doesn't make sense literally, think about how one letter changes the meaning.

Here are a few strategies that can help you solve Connections more consistently:

Final thoughts: Today's NYT Connections hints for October 19 challenged players with a creative candy-themed twist and a few tricky idioms. Whether you solved it perfectly or needed a nudge, understanding the logic behind each group can sharpen your skills for tomorrow's puzzle.