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ForbesNYT “Connections” tips and answers for Wednesday, December 25thFrom Kris Holt

Hello everyone! I hope you make the most of this holiday week.

I’ve tried to squeeze in some gaming here and there, but I’m quickly running out of time to play everything I had on my list that I wanted to check out before the end of the year. While it’s still evolving, I think my list of the best games of 2024 is shaping up well, and I look forward to sharing it in the new year.

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 26th 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…

• ORDERLY
• ALA
• GOOD-LOOKING
• ELDER
• SPRUCE
• HOW
• JAW
• MISS
• HEALTHY
• AROUND
• ARK
• PALM
• UM
• RESPECTABLE
• ORE
• UM

And the clues for today Connections Groups are:

• Yellow group – more or less
• Green group – large flora
• Blue group – plenty
• Purple group – in short: specific places

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 – approximately
• Green group – trees
• Blue group – significant, as a quantity
• Purple Group – US state abbreviations according to AP Style Guide

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 – approximately (ABOUT, AROUND, LIKE, ROUGHLY)
• Green group – trees (ELDERBERRY, PALM, PINE, SPRUCE)
• Blue group – substantial, as a quantity (pretty, healthy, respectable, tidy)
• Purple Group – US state abbreviations according to AP Style Guide (ALA, ARK, MISS, ORE)

My second perfect game in a row extends my winning streak to four wins. This is what happened to me:

🟩🟩🟩🟩

🟪🟪🟪🟪

🟦🟦🟦🟦

🟨🟨🟨🟨

Okay, okay, that wasn’t it Strictly speaking a perfect game. I misclicked on my first guess and accidentally selected ALA instead of ROUGHLY to get the yellows. The greens were also very uncomplicated.

The blues didn’t bother me at all (although I could imagine TIDY giving some people a break here). There’s not a lot of nonsense going on. What remained were the purple tones.

I was very happy that the other three groups were relatively easy, as I had no connection here and would probably have struggled with it. But if I had had some time to think, I think I might have cracked this code at some point.

They referred to ALAbama, Arkensas, MISSissippi and OREgon. By the way, AP refers to the Associated Press, which publishes a style guide that many US publications follow.

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: I have a few song recommendations that I have up my sleeve, so let’s start playing 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 some time. It’s so damn catchy:

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.