Looking for Wednesday’s Connections hints and answers instead? You can find them here:
Hey, folks! I hope you’re having an excellent week.
The weather has been strangely mild in my neck of the woods this week, so I’ve taken advantage of that by getting out for a walk or two. I mean, once the temperatures dip below -15C (5F), I will not be going outside again until April.
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 interested to find out how other people approach the game, so join us! It’s 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 Thursday, December 19, 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…
- TAP
- TUG
- KEG
- BARREL
- TABLE
- SUB
- BARGE
- HAMMER
- COUNTER
- LADDER
- GORILLA
- SHELVE
- JUNK
- DELAY
- STOOL
- POSTPONE
And the hints for today’s Connections groups are:
- Yellow group — push back
- Green group — seen at a place where everybody knows your name (dun dun dun)
- Blue group — all at sea
- Purple group — a certain Italian plumber makes his first appearance here, as you try to rescue Pauline from an angry opponent
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 — defer
- Green group — bar fixtures
- Blue group — watercraft
- Purple group — seen in Donkey Kong
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 — defer (DELAY, POSTPONE, SHELVE, TABLE)
- Green group — bar fixtures (COUNTER, KEG, STOOL, TAP)
- Blue group — watercraft (BARGE, JUNK, SUB, TUG)
- Purple group — seen in Donkey Kong (BARREL, GORILLA, HAMMER, LADDER)
My five-day streak is over. Here’s how I fared:
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟩🟩🟪🟪
🟩🟪🟦🟪
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟪🟩🟪🟪
🟪🟪🟩🟪
I’m so very mad at myself for messing this one up.
My first thought was that there was a group of boats involving BARGE, TUG and JUNK but I couldn’t see a fourth word to go with them. I switched once I spotted the yellows since those were pretty clear.
I then made a silly error with a guess of TAP, KEG, BARREL and HAMMER. Nothing doing there, and it was a (sort of) bad move since there was a group of beer-related words just yesterday.
After that, a much more careless mistake. I somehow kept three of those words together? TAP, BARGE, HAMMER and BARREL could have been verbs for making aggressive physical contact with someone. But not this time.
I then had a facepalm moment when SUB screamed at me to complete the blues. Sigh.
I was pretty stumped at that point. COUNTER, LADDER, GORILLA and HAMMER put me one away from a group, but I was down to my last life. I was still clueless. I took a wild guess by swapping LADDER for TAP, but no luck.
I was so very close to getting the greens! I’m annoyed I didn’t get those. Even more so that I didn’t get the purples. GORILLA should have been the glaring clue there.
Mentioning Mario in the clue would have perhaps made the group a little too obvious, I wager. Mario was known as Jumpman when he made his debut in 1981’s Donkey Kong.
That’s all there is to it for today’s Connections clues and answers. Be sure to check my blog tomorrow for hints and the solution for Friday’s game if you need them.
P.S. There’s only one possible option for today’s recommendation. It has to be The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. This is a fantastic documentary about a battle over the record high score in Donkey Kong. It’s funny, dramatic and very entertaining. It’s on Prime Video in the U.S. at the minute:
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.
