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

ForbesNYT “Connections” tips and answers for Tuesday, December 17thFrom Kris Holt

It’s Wednesday and you know what that means: it’s time for another round Connections!

For the past few years, I’ve diligently logged every movie I watch in Letterboxd. Film was my first real cultural love and I once had a dream of making films myself (hey, that could still happen!).

But when I recently looked at my diary in the app, I realized that I had only seen 31 movies so far this year. That’s a pretty small number for me. It doesn’t help that I’ve only been to the cinema once so far in 2024, despite being able to get into a multiplex in about 25 minutes.

That’s why one of my goals for next year is to watch more movies. I’ve long wanted to check out every entry in Empire’s 2008 list of the 500 Greatest Films of All Time, as voted on by fans, filmmakers, and critics. That seems like a good starting point. There are so many so-called classics that I haven’t seen yet.

Hey, maybe we could start a little film club in our Discord! Speaking of which…

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’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 Wednesday, December 18th 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…

• ATTACK
• TEAPOT
• HOLD
• ONION
• SHORT
• FIELD
• STOUT
• HEDGE
• HANDLE
• SOUR
• TRADE
• CAPITOL
• BITTER
• CHROME
• ADMINISTER
• DESIRE

And the clues for today Connections Groups are:

• Yellow group – take care of something
• Green Group – these may be available
• Blue Group – common terms on Bay Street or The City
• Purple group – perhaps semicircular

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 – treat
• Green group – types of beer
• Blue Group – Investment Verbs
• Purple group – ____ dome

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 – treat (FIELD, HANDLE, MANAGE, TACKLE)
• Green group – types of beer (BITTER, BOCK, SOUR, STOUT)
• Blue Group – Investment Verbs (HEDGE, HOLD, SHORT, TRADE)
• Purple Group – ____ Dome (CAPITOL, CHROME, ONION, TEAPOT)

A second perfect game in a row, this time with a regulation rainbow, extends my streak to five wins! This is what happened to me:

🟨🟨🟨🟨

🟩🟩🟩🟩

🟦🟦🟦🟦

🟪🟪🟪🟪

No real problems today. I’m starting to worry about what two relatively easy games mean – at least for me – for the rest of the week!

HANDLE and MANAGE led me to the shades of yellow. I wasn’t sure what would go with BITTER, SOUR and STOUT, but BOCK was the only thing that made sense.

I learned a lot about investing this year, so the blues were pretty easy. (I couldn’t just give you Wall Street as a clue. That would have been too easy.) I hesitated for a second about whether to include CAPITOL, but it’s a different term than “capital” and it’s not a verb anyway.

It’s just a good thing I got the blues without any problems because I didn’t know either ONION Dome or TEAPOT Dome. I knew the shape of an onion dome, but not what it was called. Curiously, it is an onion-shaped dome that is part of a building:

Before I looked it up, I thought a TEAPOT dome was a terrible name for a tea cozy, but no! It’s obviously a huge political scandal from a century ago.

I’ve never heard of it and just know I’ll soon be spending too much time reading up on it. Probably more on YouTube than from books. Thanks for nothing, millennial attention span!

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

PS: I don’t have much of a backstory or big spiel about this song. I just feel like it’s just right for a December Wednesday.

I came across this by accident, probably in a newsletter I was reading. I don’t really know. I had many tabs open at any given time and it was buried in one of them. I had also never heard of the artist Roy Blair.

Anyway! I enjoyed that. It’s a fun blast that might just help you re-energize for the second half of the week. Shimmy, shimmy, actually:

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.