Looking for Monday’s Connections hints and answers instead? You can find them here:

ForbesNYT “Connections” tips and answers for Monday, December 23rdFrom Kris Holt

Hello everyone! I hope you are all prepared for the holiday festivities as you celebrate. If you don’t celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or any of the other holidays, I hope you still enjoy a quality time with your loved ones.

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 interested in finding out how other people approach the game, so join in! It’s 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 Tuesday, December 24th 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…

• LIONS
• TIGER
• BEARS
• Oh my God
• DEAR
• JAYS
• BILLS
• USE
• BYE
• BEES
• PLEASE
• CLOSE
• CLOSELY
• GIMME
• EASE
• INTIMATE

And the clues for today Connections Groups are:

• Yellow Group – Things to look out for if you want to watch The Wizard!
• Green Group – Ways to describe a special buddy
• Blue group – say what you see
• Purple group – they sound three times as nice

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 – “Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!”
• Green group – loved like a friend
• Blue group – words that sound like several letters
• Purple Group – hit song title when tripled

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 – “Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My God!” (LIONS, TIGERS, BEARS, OH MY GOD)
• Green group – loved, as a friend (CLOSE, LOVE, CONFIDENTIAL, CLOSE)
• Blue group – words that sound like several letters (BEES, EASE, JAYS, USE)
• Purple Group – tripled hit song titles (BILLS, BYE, GIMME, PLEASE)

After a few stupid mistakes, I barely survived. Nevertheless, these are two wins in a row. This is what happened to me:

🟨🟨🟨🟪

🟨🟨🟨🟦

🟨🟨🟨🟨

🟩🟩🟩🟩

🟦🟦🟪🟦

🟦🟦🟦🟦

🟪🟪🟪🟪

I was pretty sure the top line was a red herring since BEARS, LIONS and TIGERS were all professional sports teams in North America. But no! After guessing with BILLS and JAYS I decided to just go for it and got the yellows. We will address this reference in today’s recommendation.

After staring at the grid for a few minutes, I concluded about the greens. I’m not sure how many people would say they had an intimate boyfriend, but c’est la vie. TIGHT is more of a colloquial way of expressing closeness to a friend.

I reverted to my tried-and-true tactic of saying each of the remaining words out loud, and that helped me understand the blues (Bs, Es, Js, and Us). But not before I accidentally inserted BYE. Oops. At least I still had two lives left.

What was left were the purples, and I really should have figured that out! The first thing that came to mind when I saw PLEASE was the song in question.

For the record, you’re referring to Destiny’s Child’s “Bills Bills Bills,” ‘N Sync’s “Bye Bye Bye,” “Gimme! Give me! Give me! (A Man After Midnight)” by ABBA and “Please Please Please” by Sabrina Carpenter.

That’s all for today Connections Hints and answers. Be sure to check out my blog tomorrow for hints and the walkthrough for Wednesday’s game if you need it.

PS: I’ve already recommended at least two of these purple songs in this column, so today let’s make a movie instead. “Lions and tigers and bears, oh my God!” is a very famous quote The Wizard of Oz, which I actually wanted to recommend tomorrow.

A surprising number of people I met in Canada have not seen them The Wizard of Oz. This amazes me because it is an absolute classic. Even 85 years after its premiere, it’s still great.

It’s a Christmas movie for my family. My dad especially loves the Lollipop Kids, even though they’re actually only in the film for about 30 seconds:

I wish you a wonderful day! Make sure you drink enough water! 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.