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ForbesNYT “Connections” tips and answers for Wednesday, January 1stFrom Kris Holt

Hello everyone! I hope you adjust to 2025 without having to deal with the aftereffects of your New Year celebrations.

Yesterday I told you about a mishap my former partner had on New Year’s Eve. Now it’s my turn.

Another year we decided to stay home and cook a nice dinner together. One of my tasks was to shuck oysters with the knife I had been given for Christmas for just that purpose.

The thing is, I paid too much attention to the New Year’s Eve festivities at home on the live stream and forgot to put the protective glove I was wearing back on. I think from there you can figure out what happened. Every scar tells a story and for about eleven years there has been a one centimeter long scar on my hand that is related to this incident.

Another New Year’s Eve we were in Sicily and again decided to stay in our rental apartment and cook a good meal. But after we bought all the ingredients, we both got sick and couldn’t eat anything. At least the food remained good enough to eat the next day when we were feeling better.

Anyway, before we get started, I created a discussion group for this 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, January 2nd coming 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…

• TIME
• CLOCK
• DONUT
• PADDLE
• TIRED
• MONTH
• HIT
• REGISTER
• CATCH
• LABEL
• CUSTOMS
• DAYS
• METER
• Juror
• OBSERVE
• RHYTHM

And the clues for today Connections Groups are:

• Yellow group – recognize
• Green group – stay calm
• Blue group – part of a collective
• Purple Group – “Ear” and “House” would fit here

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 – perceive
• Green Group – Cadence
• Blue Group – one in a group of 12
• Purple Group – Dog ____

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 – perceive (CATCH, WATCH, NOTICE, REGISTER)
• Green Group – Cadence (BEAT, METER, RHYTHM, TIME)
• Blue Group – one in a group of 12 (DONUT, INCH, JUROR, MONTH)
• Purple Group – Dog ____ (DAYS, PADDLE, DAY, TIRED)

My quest for a perfect game continues, but my winning streak is up to 11. This is what happened to me:

🟨🟨🟨🟨

🟩🟩🟩🟩

🟪🟪🟦🟦

🟦🟪🟪🟪

🟪🟪🟪🟪

🟦🟦🟦🟦

This time I got the yellow tones straight away. At first I thought RHYTHM might fit with a pun group, before I realized it made sense with the other shades of green.

I didn’t see anything at all that made sense for the blues or purples, although I had a hunch that DAYS and MONTH would end up in separate groups. I was in the dark and tapped TIRED, JUROR, PADDLE and MONTH. Nothing happened, meaning there were two blue and two purple colors in this guess.

DONUT, DAYS, TIRED and PADDLE were next, putting me ahead of the group by one. At this point everything fell into place: dog TIRED, dog DAYS and dog(gy) PADDLE, so DAY had to be the missing link.

By the way, if you’re on the fence about joining the aforementioned Discord, know that a) everyone in the group has been absolutely lovely so far and b) there’s now a space for people to share their pet pictures. So many enchanting photos already.

Back to today’s game! I didn’t figure out the blue connection before submitting these words, but of course that was the connection between them. Mmmm… donuts.

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: Given today’s purple group, I was tempted to abandon my planned recommendation and swing by Florence + the Machine’s great “Dog Days Are Over,” but I added this song to the column a few months ago.

Green Day’s “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” came on the radio the other day and even though I’ve heard it a million times, I misunderstood one of the lyrics and it really amused me. I heard “I’m walking alone” as “I’m wearing cologne.” Anyway, good song. I really enjoyed hearing the band play live last summer:

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.