NYT Connections #864 for Wednesday, October 22, 2025, groups the 16 words into household utilities, words meaning adapt or shape something, types of ants, and words that follow “COPY.” Use the spoiler-safe hints first or jump to the full answers below.
Spoiler warning: The first sections offer progressively stronger hints for NYT Connections #864. The complete categories and answers appear farther down the page.
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Today’s Connections words for Wednesday, October 22
The 16 words in the Wednesday, October 22, 2025, puzzle are:
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- FASHION
- WRITER
- PASTA
- SHAPE
- PHARAOH
- TAILOR
- FIRE
- WATER
- GAS
- CARPENTER
- ELECTRIC
- MOLD
- TELEPHONE
- CAT
- RIGHT
- ARMY
Connections hints for October 22
Connections asks you to divide all 16 words into four groups of four. The groups are commonly represented by yellow, green, blue, and purple difficulty levels. Start with the least revealing clues below, then continue only if you need more help.
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Category hints
- Yellow: Bills or services that many households pay for regularly.
- Green: Make something suitable for a particular purpose or person.
- Blue: Types of small social insects.
- Purple: Add COPY before each word.
One word from each group
If the category hints are not quite enough, here is one representative answer from every group:
- Yellow: WATER
- Green: FASHION
- Blue: ARMY
- Purple: RIGHT
NYT Connections #864 answers
Here is the complete solution for Wednesday, October 22, 2025. Stop reading here if you want to keep solving without seeing the full answer.
Yellow: UTILITIES
ELECTRIC, GAS, TELEPHONE, WATER
These are household utility services or the bills associated with them. In this puzzle, ELECTRIC is being used as shorthand for electric service or electricity.
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Green: ADAPT TO FIT ONE’S NEEDS
FASHION, MOLD, SHAPE, TAILOR
Each word can describe changing or creating something so that it suits a particular need. Fashion can be a verb meaning to make or shape, while mold and shape have the direct sense of forming something. To tailor something is to customize it for a person or purpose.
Blue: KINDS OF ANTS
ARMY, CARPENTER, FIRE, PHARAOH
Place ants after each word: army ants, carpenter ants, fire ants, and pharaoh ants.
Purple: COPY____
CAT, PASTA, RIGHT, WRITER
Adding COPY before each word creates copycat, copypasta, copyright, and copywriter.
Copypasta is internet slang for a block of text that is repeatedly copied and pasted online. The other three resulting compounds are more familiar standard terms, making this the less obvious connection in the purple group.
Why these Connections answers can be tricky
The yellow group is relatively approachable once ELECTRIC, GAS, and WATER are noticed. TELEPHONE completes the group as another familiar household service.
The green words can initially suggest clothing, jobs, or physical objects. FASHION, MOLD, SHAPE, and TAILOR are connected by their verb meanings: each can involve adapting or forming something to fit a need.
CARPENTER is a deliberate-looking decoy. It can appear to belong with occupations such as WRITER and TAILOR, but it instead joins ARMY, FIRE, and PHARAOH to form types of ants.
The final group is a word-completion category rather than a group of words with the same standalone meaning. Putting COPY in front of CAT, PASTA, RIGHT, and WRITER reveals the four purple answers.
More Connections puzzles
If you enjoy solving the daily game and want additional puzzles away from the digital grid, the publisher’s first book-form collection is the New York Times Connections puzzle book, associated with The New York Times Games and Wyna Liu. It is a separate collection of Connections puzzles; there is no basis here to claim that it contains puzzle #864 specifically.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How to play NYT Connections
Choose four words that share a category, then submit the group. Repeat until all 16 words have been placed into four groups. You have a limited number of incorrect guesses, so it is worth checking whether a word could fit more than one apparent category before submitting.
The puzzle’s color scale generally moves from the most straightforward yellow group through green and blue to the most difficult or wordplay-heavy purple group. A word may look like it belongs in multiple groups, but only one complete arrangement uses every word exactly once.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the categories in NYT Connections #864?
The four NYT Connections #864 groups are UTILITIES; ADAPT TO FIT ONE’S NEEDS; KINDS OF ANTS; and COPY____.
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ELECTRIC, GAS, TELEPHONE, and WATER are the four words in the UTILITIES group.
What is the blue group in Connections #864?
ARMY, CARPENTER, FIRE, and PHARAOH are all types of ants when followed by the word “ants.”
What is the purple answer in Connections #864?
The purple group is CAT, PASTA, RIGHT, and WRITER. Adding COPY before each produces copycat, copypasta, copyright, and copywriter.
The Bottom Line
The answers to NYT Connections #864 are UTILITIES (ELECTRIC, GAS, TELEPHONE, WATER), ADAPT TO FIT ONE’S NEEDS (FASHION, MOLD, SHAPE, TAILOR), KINDS OF ANTS (ARMY, CARPENTER, FIRE, PHARAOH), and COPY____ (CAT, PASTA, RIGHT, WRITER).
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