Looking for Friday’s Connections hints and answers instead? You can find them here:
Hey there! I hope you’ve got some great weekend plans lined up and that you’re not going to spend too much time dealing with holiday shopping.
This week, Google released its list of top search trends for 2024. The top search trend in games this year wasn’t Fortnite or Helldivers 2 or Call of Duty. Nope! It was Connections. That’s pretty neat. Thanks for hanging out with me, whether or not you found the column that way.
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 Saturday, December 14, 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…
- GOING
- SOLE
- REAL
- BUTTER
- FLUKE
- SOLD
- DIVA
- SOL
- ONCE
- SOLO
- TANG
- YUAN
- POUND
- TWICE
- WORLD
- MULLET
And the hints for today’s Connections groups are:
- Yellow group — sealife
- Green group — familiar sounds on Antiques Roadshow or at Sotheby’s
- Blue group —
- Purple group — don’t spill the tea with these
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 — fish
- Green group — words in an auction-ending phrase
- Blue group — global currencies
- Purple group — words before “cup”
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 — fish (FLUKE, MULLET, SOLE, TANG)
- Green group — words in an auction-ending phrase (GOING, ONCE, TWICE, SOLD)
- Blue group — global currencies (POUND, REAL, SOL, YUAN)
- Purple group — words before “cup” (BUTTER, DIVE, SOLO, WORLD)
I’m back to winning ways with a perfect game. Here’s how I fared:
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟪🟪🟪🟪
I realllly needed an easy win after losing three games in a row. I almost got that as I hesitated at a couple of points here.
The yellows and blues more or less stood out as I was putting the word list together, and the greens came together in my mind as I assembled the first group.
I wasn’t 100% sure that MULLET and TANG were fish. I just had that nagging feeling. I was convinced that FLUKE and SOLE were half of the group, so I went with it.
The greens were immediately next. It itched my brain something awful to see the game order the words incorrectly (albeit alphabetically) after I submitted them. “GOING, ONCE, SOLD, TWICE” looks so, so wrong, and I had to fix it in my own answer list above.
The blues were next. Again, I wasn’t entirely sure that SOL belonged, but I knew that POUND (Britain), REAL (Brazil) and YUAN (China) had to go together. As it turns out, the SOL is Peru’s currency. I just learned something new.
That left the purples. I didn’t make the connection. But it was once of those that felt blindingly obvious in hindsight.
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 Sunday’s game if you need them.
P.S. The other day, my co-workers and I were discussing the news that stop-motion studio Aardman and The Pokémon Company are collaborating on a new project, most likely a TV show or movie. One of them mentioned that Aardman was behind the all-timer music video for “Sledgehammer” by Peter Gabriel. I didn’t know that!
That got me wondering what the former Genesis frontman is up to these days. So I found a video of him singing the song on tour last year.
Goodness me, he sounds great and even still sings “Sledgehammer” in its original key. This is so, so good. I must have listened to it 10 times over the last couple of days:
Harry Styles’ cover is fantastic too:
Have a great day! Call someone you love!
If you’re so inclined, please do follow my blog for more coverage of Connections and other word games and even some video game news, insights and analysis. It helps me out a lot! Also, follow me on Bluesky! It’s fun there.
