Looking for Thursday’s Connections hints and answers instead? You can find them here:
Hey there! I hope you’ve recovered from yesterday’s game. That was a humdinger. Without spoiling too much, today’s grid is a return to normality.
Before we get started, I’ve started a discussion group for Connections and this column on Discord. You can chat about each game (and other topics) with me and other folks. I’m always curious how other people approach the game, so join us! It’ll be fun.
It’s also the best way to give me any feedback about the column, especially on the rare(!) occasions that I mess something up.
Today’s NYT Connections hints and answers for Friday, December 13, are coming right up.
How To Play Connections
Connections is a free, popular New York Times daily word game. You get a new puzzle at midnight every day. You can play on the NYT website or Games app.
You’re presented with a grid of 16 words. Your task is to arrange them into four groups of four by figuring out the links between them. The groups could be things like items you can click, names for research study participants or words preceded by a body part.
There’s only one solution for each puzzle, and you’ll need to be careful when it comes to words that might fit into more than one category. You can shuffle the words to perhaps help you see links between them.
Each group is color coded. The yellow group is usually the easiest to figure out, blue and green fall in the middle, and the purple group is usually the most difficult one. The purple group often involves wordplay.
Select four words you think go together and press Submit. If you make a guess and you’re incorrect, you’ll lose a life. If you’re close to having a correct group, you might see a message telling you that you’re one word away from getting it right, but you’ll still need to figure out which one to swap.
If you make four mistakes, it’s game over. Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen with the help of some hints, and, if you’re really struggling, today’s Connections answers. As with Wordle and other similar games, it’s easy to share results with your friends on social media and group chats.
If you have an NYT All Access or Games subscription, you can access the publication’s Connections archive. This includes every previous game of Connections, so you can go back and play any of those that you have missed.
Aside from the first 60 games or so, you should be able to find my hints for each grid via Google if you need them! Just click here and add the date of the game for which you need clues or the answers to the search query.
What Are Today’s Connections Hints?
Scroll slowly! Just after the hints for each of today’s Connections groups, I’ll reveal what the groups are without immediately telling you which words go into them.
Today’s 16 words are…
- TRASH
- PHISH
- CRUSH
- TROLL
- BORE
- SPAM
- LINKS
- SQUIRT
- SPRITE
- TOWED
- GIANT
- DRAFTS
- PIXIE
- SENT
- STARRY
- DRAGON
And the hints for today’s Connections groups are:
- Yellow group — ever-presents in fairy tales
- Green group — common sights in digital communications
- Blue group — bubbly beverages
- Purple group — fauna soundalikes
What Are Today’s Connections Groups?
Need some extra help?
Be warned: we’re starting to get into spoiler territory.
Today’s Connections groups are…
- Yellow group — fantasy creatures
- Green group — email folders
- Blue group — citrus sodas
- Purple group — animal homophones
What Are Today’s Connections Answers?
Spoiler alert! Don’t scroll any further down the page until you’re ready to find out today’s Connections answers.
This is your final warning!
Today’s Connections answers are…
- Yellow group — fantasy creatures (DRAGON, GIANT, PIXIE, TROLL)
- Green group — email folders (DRAFTS, SENT, SPAM, TRASH)
- Blue group — citrus sodas (CRUSH, SPRITE, SQUIRT, STARRY)
- Purple group — animal homophones (BORE, LINKS, PHISH, TOWED)
That’s my third loss in a row. Yikes! Here’s how I fared:
🟪🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟪🟦🟦🟦
🟪🟦🟪🟦
🟦🟦🟦🟪
There was a bit of an internet/email theme here today, given the likes of TRASH, PHISH, TROLL, SPAM, LINKS, DRAFTS and SENT. So I figured I’d go with a “types of email” guess of PHISH, SPAM, DRAFTS and SENT. I was one away. I had a hunch that PHISH was the outlier and, sure enough, I had the greens.
The yellows were then easy to spot on the rearranged grid. The game then pushed CRUSH and SQUIRT together on the right-hand side. I thought that might lead to a group of Finding Nemo characters (those are two of the turtles Nemo and Dory ride a current with). I didn’t see any other obvious character names, so I tried SPRITE and PHISH. That put me one away from a group.
There was only one other present tense verb left, so I swapped out SPRITE for BORE. No dice. I didn’t have it, so I tried swapping PHISH for TOWED, but that didn’t work either.
I’ve never heard of SQUIRT and STARRY sodas and I am only vaguely familiar with CRUSH. I probably should have figured out the purples though. As soon as I saw PHISH, I thought that I should keep all three meanings in mind: the animal homophone, the band and the social engineering attack. But, uh, I forgot all about that by the end.
For those who are curious, the purples refer to boar (BORE), lynx (LINKS), fish (PHISH) and toad (TOWED).
That’s all there is to it for today’s Connections clues and answers. Be sure to check my blog for hints and the solution for Saturday’s game if you need them.
P.S. I had a different recommendation planned, but I’ll save that for another day now that I’ve got Finding Nemo on the brain. What a gorgeous, brilliant film that is.
I loved it at the theater and it was the first Blu-ray I watched on my first high-def TV. Weirdly, I can’t find a good official HD version of the original trailer on YouTube, so here’s one for the 3D re-release:
Have a great day! Call someone you love!
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