Connections #1,238 hints and answers for Saturday, October 31, 2026
Connections #1,238 is a Halloween-night board that runs from the bar to the dog park: four slang compliments that sound like insults, four ways to order a martini, four things that have strings, and a purple group hiding four dog commands at the starts of longer words. Watch DIRTY - it sounds like it belongs with the insults, but it is spoken at the bar instead. For each group below: read the hint first, then show the category name when you want it, then the four words, one group at a time.
Group 1 - Yellow
Hint: all four are slang praise that sounds like an insult: a wave, a performance or a party can be described by any of them in the approving sense, even though each word's plain meaning is rough, deadly, ill or evil.
WORDS MEANING GOOD THAT SOUND BAD
WORDS MEANING GOOD THAT SOUND BAD
Group 2 - Green
Hint: each word is something you say to a bartender when ordering one specific cocktail: with olive brine, with very little vermouth, agitated with ice instead of stirred, or served chilled with no ice in the glass.
MARTINI SPECIFICATIONS
MARTINI SPECIFICATIONS
Group 3 - Blue
Hint: each one has strings: six on the instrument you strum, a whole set worked from above to move a puppet, a hanging bundle of threads on a graduation cap, and a woven bed in the frame you swing at a ball.
THINGS WITH STRINGS
THINGS WITH STRINGS
Group 4 - Purple
Hint: each word starts with a command you give a dog: DOWN in a word for a collapse, SHAKE in the Bard's name, SIT in a television comedy format, and STAY in a vacation taken at home.