If Saturday’s Connections is putting up a fight, you don’t have to burn your streak. Below are layered hints that start gentle and end with the complete solution for puzzle #867. If you still want to play it fresh, launch the puzzle first on the New York Times Games site at nytimes.com/games/connections.

Category hints (no spoilers)

  • Yellow: Verbs for tricking or cheating someone.
  • Green: Features you commonly find on a digital watch.
  • Blue: Verbs that mean “to give or bestow.”
  • Purple: Biopics about a single figure that won Best Actor at the Oscars.

Note: There is no clothing category today.

One-word reveals (light spoilers)

Color Reveal
Yellow FLEECE
Green ALARM
Blue AWARD
Purple MILK

NYT Connections answers for Oct 25, 2025 (#867)

Color Category Words
Yellow Swindle FLEECE, HOSE, HUSTLE, SHAFT
Green Digital Watch Features ALARM, DATE, LIGHT, STOPWATCH
Blue Confer ACCORD, AWARD, GRANT, VEST
Purple Best Actor–Winning Biopics CAPOTE, LINCOLN, MILK, RAY

A few quick clarifications that can save a guess:

  • “VEST” in the blue group is about bestowing rights or authority (“vest power in”).
  • “HOSE” and “SHAFT” both work as slang for cheating someone, which is why they sit with “FLEECE” and “HUSTLE.”
  • In the green set, “DATE” refers to the calendar display on a digital watch.
  • The purple group is about film titles, not the people: each title corresponds to an Oscar-winning Best Actor performance.

Difficulty rating and theme notes

Testers pegged today’s difficulty at 2.3 out of 5, on the easier side for a weekend. Overlaps to watch for: action-heavy verbs in yellow versus the more formal “confer” verbs in blue. If you’re down to a coin flip, confirm whether the verb clearly implies trickery (yellow) or formal bestowal (blue). For the green set, keep it to functions you’d expect on a straightforward digital watch face; anything too app-like is probably a red herring.

If you solved without reveals, nice work. If not, consider using the category hints first next time—today’s wall is built to reward spotting tone and register, especially between the two verb sets. When you’re ready to try again, load up the next puzzle in the Games hub.