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The January 17, 2025, edition of Connections is puzzle #586. Its four groups are Frankfurter, Strike, Web Browsers, and words ending in beer brands. The main trap is PEPPERONI: it belongs with the beer-brand wordplay, not the sausage group.
NYT Connections #586 answers for January 17, 2025
Here is the complete solution, with each word assigned to its category.
| Category | Words |
|---|---|
| Yellow — Frankfurter | BANGER, BRAT, LINK, SAUSAGE |
| Green — Strike | BOP, HIT, KNOCK, TAP |
| Blue — Web Browsers | CHROME, EDGE, OPERA, SAFARI |
| Purple — Ending with beer brands | AUTOHARP, CONTRABASS, PEPPERONI, ROSEBUD |
The date is January 17, 2025, and the puzzle number is #586; the year matters because January 17, 2026 was a different game, #951. Dated answer coverage identifies the 2025 edition and its groups.
How the wordplay works
Start with the browser quartet
CHROME, EDGE, OPERA, and SAFARI are all web browsers. Recognizing this familiar set gives you a reliable group to remove from the board before weighing the more ambiguous words.
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Separate food meaning from word endings
PEPPERONI looks like it belongs with BANGER, BRAT, LINK, and SAUSAGE because all can refer to sausages. But the purple category is built from beer brands at the ends of the words: AUTOHARP contains Harp, CONTRABASS contains Bass, PEPPERONI contains Peroni, and ROSEBUD ends in Bud. PEPPERONI is therefore the key decoy: its ordinary food meaning points one way, while its ending places it in the wordplay group.
Read “strike” broadly
BOP, HIT, KNOCK, and TAP can each describe striking or making contact with something. Once the browser names and beer-brand endings are accounted for, this is the remaining action-based set.
Quick Recap
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A practical solving order
- Set aside the obvious browsers: test CHROME, EDGE, OPERA, and SAFARI as a complete group.
- Resist the food decoy: do not place PEPPERONI with BANGER, BRAT, LINK, and SAUSAGE until you have checked whether another pattern explains it.
- Test the action words: group BOP, HIT, KNOCK, and TAP as forms of striking or contact.
- Inspect the remaining endings: Harp, Bass, Peroni, and Bud reveal the beer brands hidden in AUTOHARP, CONTRABASS, PEPPERONI, and ROSEBUD.
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