Looking for Wednesday’s Connections hints and answers instead? You can find them here:
Hey, everyone! I hope you’re making the most of this holiday week.
I’ve been trying to squeeze some gaming in here and there, but I’m rapidly running out of time to play everything I had on my list to check out before the end of the year. Even though it’s still in flux, I think my best games of 2024 list is shaping up nicely, and I’m looking forward to sharing that in the New Year.
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 26, 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…
- TIDY
- ALA
- HANDSOME
- ELDER
- SPRUCE
- LIKE
- PINE
- MISS
- HEALTHY
- ROUGHLY
- ARK
- PALM
- ABOUT
- RESPECTABLE
- ORE
- AROUND
And the hints for today’s Connections groups are:
- Yellow group — more or less
- Green group — large flora
- Blue group — plenty
- Purple group — certain locations, for short
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 — approximately
- Green group — trees
- Blue group — sizeable, as an amount
- Purple group — U.S. state abbreviations, per AP Style Guide
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 — approximately (ABOUT, AROUND, LIKE, ROUGHLY)
- Green group — trees (ELDER, PALM, PINE, SPRUCE)
- Blue group — sizeable, as an amount (HANDSOME, HEALTHY, RESPECTABLE, TIDY)
- Purple group — U.S. state abbreviations, per AP Style Guide (ALA, ARK, MISS, ORE)
My second perfect game in a row extends my streak to four wins. Here’s how I fared:
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟪🟪🟪🟪
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟨🟨🟨🟨
Okay, okay, it wasn’t actually a perfect game. I misclicked my first guess and accidentally selected ALA instead of ROUGHLY to get the yellows. The greens were very straightforward too.
The blues gave me absolutely no trouble either (though I could see TIDY giving some folks pause here). Not much tomfoolery going on there. That left the purples.
I was very glad that the other three groups were relatively easy as I did not get the connection here and probably would have struggled with it. But given a little time to mull it over, I think I might have cracked this code eventually.
They related to ALAbama, ARKensas, MISSissippi and OREgon. AP, by the way, refers to the Associated Press, which publishes a style guide to which many U.S. publications adhere.
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. I’ve got a few song recommendations that I’ve been stockpiling, so let’s start jamming through them. For no good reason that I can think of, I’ve had the original version of “Life is a Highway” by Tom Cochrane stuck in my head for a while. It’s so darn catchy:
Have a great day! Make sure to drink enough water! 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.
