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

ForbesNYT “Connections” tips and answers for Wednesday, December 18thFrom Kris Holt

Hey people! I hope you have a great week.

The weather has been strangely mild in my neck of the woods this week, so I took advantage of it by going for a walk or two. I mean, once the temperatures drop below -15°C (5°F), I won’t be going outside again until April.

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 Thursday, December 19th 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 items 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…

• KNOCK
• TRACTOR
• BARREL
• BARREL
• TABLE
• SUB
• BARGE
• HAMMER
• SWITCH
• DIRECTOR
• GORILLA
• SHELF
• Garbage
• DELAY
• STOOL
• MOVE

And the clues for today Connections Groups are:

• Yellow group – push back
• Green group – seen in a place where everyone knows your name (dun dun du)
• Blue group – all at sea
• Purple Group – a certain Italian plumber makes his first appearance here as you attempt to save Pauline from an angry enemy

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 – postpone
• Green Group – Bar Facilities
• Blue group – watercraft
• Purple group – seen in Donkey Kong

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 – defer (DELAY, POSTPONE, SHELVE, TABLE)
• Green Group – Bar Facilities (COUNTER, KEG, STOOL, TAP)
• Blue group – watercraft (BARGE, JUNK, SUB, TUG)
• Purple group – seen in Donkey Kong (BARRELS, GORILLA, HAMMER, LADDER)

My five day streak is over. This is what happened to me:

🟨🟨🟨🟨

🟩🟩🟪🟪

🟩🟪🟦🟪

🟦🟦🟦🟦

🟪🟩🟪🟪

🟪🟪🟩🟪

I’m so mad at myself for screwing this up.

My first thought was that there was a group of boats consisting of BARGE, TUG and JUNK, but I couldn’t see a fourth word that matched them. I switched when I spotted the yellows as they were pretty clear.

Then I made a stupid mistake and guessed TAP, KEG, BARREL and HAMMER. There’s nothing going on there, and it was a bad move (kind of) since just yesterday there was a group of beer-related words.

Then a much more negligent mistake. I somehow kept three of those words together? TAP, BARGE, HAMMER and BARREL could have been verbs for aggressive physical contact with someone. But not this time.

Then I had a palm-palming moment as SUB yelled at me to complete the blues. Sigh.

At this point I was pretty stumped. COUNTER, LADDER, GORILLA and HAMMER took me out of a group, but I was in my last life. I was still at a loss. I made a wild guess by swapping LADDER for TAP, but no luck.

I was so close to getting the greens! I’m annoyed that I didn’t get it. Even more so that I didn’t get the purple tones. GORILLA should have been the glaring clue here.

I bet mentioning Mario in the clue might have made the group a little too obvious. Mario was known as Jumpman when he debuted in 1981 Donkey Kong.

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

PS For today’s recommendation there is only one possible option. It must be The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. This is a fantastic documentary about a battle for the record high score in Donkey Kong. It’s funny, dramatic and very entertaining. It’s currently streaming on Prime Video in the US:

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.