Looking for Friday’s Connections tips and answers instead? You can find them here:

ForbesNYT “Connections” tips and answers for Friday, December 13thFrom Kris Holt

Hello! I hope you have some great weekend plans in place and don’t spend too much time Christmas shopping.

This week Google released its list of top search trends for 2024. The top search trend in games wasn’t the case this year Fortnite or Helldivers 2 or Call of Duty. No! It was Connections. That’s pretty neat. Thank you for joining me, whether that’s how you found the column or not.

Before we begin, I created a discussion group for Connections and this column on Discord. You can chat with me and other people about any game (and other topics). I’m always curious to see how other people approach the game, so join in! It will be fun.

It’s also the best way to give me feedback on the column, especially on the rare(!) occasions when I mess something up.

Today NYT Connections Hints and answers for Saturday, December 14th will follow soon.

How to play connections

Connections is a free, popular one New York Times daily pun. You will receive a new puzzle every day at midnight. You can play on that NYT Website or gaming app.

You will be presented with a grid of 16 words. Your task is to divide them into four groups of four by figuring out the connections between them. The groups can be, for example, elements that you can click on, names of research participants, or words preceded by a body part.

Each puzzle has only one solution, and you have to be careful when it comes to words that could fit into more than one category. You can mix up the words to perhaps better see the connections between them.

Each group is color coded. The yellow group is usually the easiest to understand, blue and green are in the middle, and the purple group is usually the most difficult. The purple group often contains puns.

Select four words that you think go together and click Send. If you guess and are wrong, you lose a life. When you’re close to finding the right group, you may see a message saying you’re one word away from the right group, but you still need to figure out which word to swap.

If you make four mistakes, the game is over. Let’s make sure that this doesn’t happen with the help of some tips, and if you really find it difficult, even with today’s ones Connections Answer. Like with Wordle and other similar games, it’s easy to share results with your friends on social media and group chats.

If you have one NYT You can access the publications with the All Access or Games subscription Connections Archive. This includes every previous game from Connectionsso you can go back and play any songs you missed.

Aside from the first 60 or so games, you should be able to find my clues for each grid via Google if you need to! Simply click here and enter the date of the game for which you need hints or answers to the search query.

What are today’s connection notes?

Scroll slowly! Right after the clues for each of today’s Connections Groups, I will reveal what the groups are without immediately telling you what words appear in them.

Today’s 16 words are…

• GO
• SOLE
• REAL
• BUTTER
• FLUKE
• SOLD
• DIVA
• SOL
• ONCE
• SOLO
• TANG
• YUAN
• POUND
• TWICE
• WORLD
• MUULLET

And the clues for today Connections Groups are:

• Yellow group – marine life
• Green group – familiar sounds Antiques Roadshow or at Sotheby’s
• Blue Group –

• Purple group – don’t spill the tea on this one

What are today’s sorority groups?

Do you need additional help?

Be warned: We’re starting to get into this Spoiler territory.

Today Connections Groups are…

• Yellow group – fish
• Green group – words in an auction end phrase
• Blue group – global currencies
• Purple group – words before “cup”

What are today’s connection solutions?

Spoiler alert! Don’t scroll any further down the page until you’re ready to find out today Connections Answer.

This is your final warning!

Today Connections Answers are…

• Yellow group – fish (FLUKE, MULLET, SOLE, TANG)
• Green Group – Words in an Auction End Phrase (GOING, ONCE, TWICE, SOLD)
• Blue Group – Global Currencies (Pound, Real, SOL, YUAN)
• Purple Group – Words before “Cup” (BUTTER, DIVE, SOLO, WORLD)

With a perfect game I’m back on the winning road. This is what happened to me:

🟨🟨🟨🟨

🟩🟩🟩🟩

🟦🟦🟦🟦

🟪🟪🟪🟪

I really needed an easy win after losing three games in a row. I almost succeeded because I hesitated at a few points.

The yellows and blues more or less stood out as I put together the word list, and the greens came together in my head as I put together the first group.

I wasn’t 100% sure MULLET and TANG were fish. I just had this nagging feeling. I was convinced that FLUKE and SOLE were half of the group, so I joined.

The greens were right next to it. It gave me a terrible headache to see the game sorting the words incorrectly (albeit alphabetically) after I submitted them. “WELL, ONCE, SOLD, TWICE” looks so, so wrong and I had to correct it in my own answer list above.

Next came the Blues. Again, I wasn’t entirely sure if SOL was included, but I knew that POUND (UK), REAL (Brazil) and YUAN (China) had to fit together. As it turns out, the SOL is the currency of Peru. I just learned something new.

What remained were the purple tones. I didn’t make the connection. But it was one of those that felt blindingly obvious in retrospect.

That’s all for today Connections Hints and answers. Be sure to check out my blog for tips and the solution for Sunday’s game if you need them.

PS The other day my colleagues 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 film. One of them mentioned that Aardman was behind the all-time music video for Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer.” I didn’t know that!

It made me wonder what the former Genesis frontman is up to these days. So I found a video of him singing the song on tour last year.

My goodness, he sounds great and even sings “Sledgehammer” in the original key. This is so, so good. I must have listened to it ten times in the last few days:

Harry Styles’ cover is also fantastic:

I wish you a wonderful day! Call someone you love!

If you feel like it, please do it Follow my blog for more coverage of Connections and other puns and even some video game news, insights and analysis. It helps me a lot! Keep following me too Bluesky! It’s fun there.