Looking for Monday’s Connections hints and answers instead? You can find them here:
Hey, everyone! I hope you’re all prepared for the holiday festivities if you’re celebrating. If you don’t celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa or any of the other seasonal holidays, I hope you enjoy some quality time with loved ones regardless.
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 Tuesday, December 24, 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…
- LIONS
- TIGERS
- BEARS
- OH MY
- DEAR
- JAYS
- BILLS
- USE
- BYE
- BEES
- PLEASE
- CLOSE
- TIGHT
- GIMME
- EASE
- INTIMATE
And the hints for today’s Connections groups are:
- Yellow group — things to look out for when you’re off to see The Wizard!
- Green group — ways to describe a special pal
- Blue group — say what you see
- Purple group — they sound thrice as nice
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 — “lions and tigers and bears, oh my!”
- Green group — beloved, as a friend
- Blue group — words that sound like plural letters
- Purple group — when tripled, hit song titles
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 — “lions and tigers and bears, oh my!” (LIONS, TIGERS, BEARS, OH MY)
- Green group — beloved, as a friend (CLOSE, DEAR, INTIMATE, TIGHT)
- Blue group — words that sound like plural letters (BEES, EASE, JAYS, USE)
- Purple group — when tripled, hit song titles (BILLS, BYE, GIMME, PLEASE)
I barely survived after a few silly errors. Still, that’s back-to-back wins in the bag. Here’s how I fared:
🟨🟨🟨🟪
🟨🟨🟨🟦
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟦🟦🟪🟦
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟪🟪🟪🟪
I was pretty sure the top line was a red herring, with BEARS, LIONS and TIGERS all being pro sports teams in North America. But no! After guesses with BILLS and JAYS, I decided to just go for it and got the yellows. We’ll get to that reference in today’s recommendation.
After a few minutes of staring at the grid, I deduced the greens. I’m not sure how many people would say they had an INTIMATE friend, but c’est la vie. TIGHT is more of a colloquial way of expressing closeness with a friend.
I went back to my tried and tested tactic of saying each of the remaining words out loud, and that helped me get the blues (Bs, Es, Js and Us). But not before I accidentally included BYE by mistake. Oops. At least I had two lives remaining.
That left the purples and I really should have figured those out! The first thing that sprang to mind when I saw PLEASE was the song in question.
For the record, they refer to “Bills Bills Bills” by Destiny’s Child, “Bye Bye Bye” by ’N Sync, “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)” by ABBA and “Please Please Please” by Sabrina Carpenter.
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 Wednesday’s game if you need them.
P.S. I’ve recommended at least two of those purple songs before in this column, so let’s go with a movie instead today. “Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!” is a very famous quote from The Wizard of Oz, which I was actually planning to recommend tomorrow.
A surprising number of people I’ve met in Canada haven’t seen The Wizard of Oz. That astounds me, as it’s an all-time great. Eighty-five years after it premiered, it’s still great.
It’s a Christmas movie for my family. My Dad especially loves the Lollipop Kids, even though they’re only really in the movie for about 30 seconds:
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.
