Find the links between the words to win today’s game of Connections.
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Each day’s game of NYT Connections goes live at midnight local time. Before today’s NYT Connections hints, here’s what you missed on Thursday:
ForbesNYT Connections Hints Today: Thursday, December 11 Clues And Answers (#914)By Kris HoltForbesNYT Connections: Today’s Answers Explained (Thursday, December 11, #914)By Kris Holt
Hey there, Connectors! The weekend is almost here. But wait! Don’t rush into it without completing today’s Connections first. Gotta keep that streak going.
I usually save my recommendations for the end of the column, but I’ve got another one for you today. Skate Story is a new video game from Sam Eng. It’s about a demon who makes a deal with the Devil. If the demon can skateboard to the moon and swallow it, the Devil will free them from the underworld. The Devil also turns the demon into a being made of “glass and pain.”
It’s more of a narrative-driven adventure than a skateboarding sim like the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series. As that setup suggests, the story gets pretty unusual.
Skate Story looks and sounds absolutely incredible – I’ve never seen a game that looks quite like it and the soundtrack by Blood Cultures and John Fio is rad as hell. I’d been looking forward to this since (I think) 2022, and it’s been well worth the wait.
Skate Story is out now on PC, macOS, Nintendo Switch 2 and PS5. It’s included on the Extra and Premium tiers of PlayStation Plus.
Before we start, I want to mention the great community we have on Discord, where we chat about Connections, the rest of the NYT games and all kinds of other stuff. It’s a lovely, welcoming group of folks. I like to call it our cozy little corner of the internet. You’re more than welcome to join us. Don’t be shy!
Today’s NYT Connections hints and answers for Friday, December 12 are coming right up. Let’s get rolling!
NYT Connections – How To Play
Connections is a free New York Times daily word game that you can play on the NYT’s website or Games app. If you have an NYT All Access or Games subscription, you can access the Connections archive, which includes every previous game.
Connections presents you with a grid of 16 words (sometimes phrases, symbols or numbers). The aim is to arrange them into four groups of four. You don’t know how they hit together or what the category for each group is: that’s what you have to figure out.
There’s only one correct solution and there are often red herrings. You can guess incorrectly three times. A fourth wrong guess, and it’s game over.
Each group is color coded. The yellow group is usually the easiest to deduce, followed by blue, green and purple. Often, the yellow and green groups have synonyms, the blues have cultural references and the purples have some kind of wordplay involved. But this is not a hard and fast rule. Be ready for curveballs – part of the fun of Connections is in how the NYT shakes things up to keep you on your toes.
As with Wordle and similar games, it’s easy to share results with your friends using an emoji-based grid. The game tracks your progress too.
Many players take pride in having long win streaks or getting a reverse rainbow – correctly guessing the purple, blue, green and yellow groups in that order with no mistakes. That adds an extra little challenge.
NYT Connections Hints – Today’s Word List
Scroll slowly! I’ll first give you a list of today’s words, then a hint for each category. After that, I’ll reveal one word that goes into each group. Then I’ll tell you the category names, followed by the full answers.
Today’s 16 words are…
HOUSECLOCKEARFLAPBULBWAVEHEADYEARFOOTSTOREBLOWSPEARHOLDSWAYZODIACKEEPNYT Connections Hints
And the hints for today’s Connections groups are:
🟨 Yellow group — put aside, stock up🟩 Green group — where Bob Dylan may believe you’ll find the answer, according to one of his best-known songs🟦 Blue group — one of many from the ground🟪 Purple group — a baker might toss in an extra hereNYT Connections Hints – One Answer Per Group
Need some extra help?
Be warned: we’re starting to get into spoiler territory.
Let’s take a look at one answer for each group.
Here we go…
🟨 Yellow group — HOUSE🟩 Green group — SWAY🟦 Blue group — EAR🟪 Purple group — CLOCKNYT Connections Hints – Groups/Categories
Today’s Connections groups are…
🟨 Yellow group — contain🟩 Green group — move in the wind🟦 Blue group — vegetable units🟪 Purple group — things that are divided into twelve segmentsNYT Connections Answers
Spoiler alert! Don’t scroll any further down the page until you’re ready to find out today’s Connections answers.
This is your last chance to look away.
This is your final warning!
Today’s Connections answers are…
🟨 Yellow group — contain (HOLD, HOUSE, KEEP, STORE)🟩 Green group — move in the wind (BLOW, FLAP, SWAY, WAVE)🟦 Blue group — vegetable units (BULB, EAR, HEAD, SPEAR)🟪 Purple group — things that are divided into twelve segments (CLOCK, FOOT, YEAR, ZODIAC)
CLOCK and ZODIAC made the purples immediately clear to me. I was a little surprised. I thought they’d be blue at most, and even then that felt like a stretch. They refer to hours (CLOCK), inches (FOOT), months (YEAR) and astrological signs (ZODIAC).
The yellows were up next once I realized that HOUSE was the fourth word I was looking for. From there, BULB and EAR gave the game away from the blues. The green connection was simple enough to figure out too, I felt.
I thought this was a relatively easy game to wrap up the week with. Another perfect game extends my streak to 286 wins in a row. How did you get on today?
Here’s my grid:
🟪🟪🟪🟪
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟩🟩🟩🟩
I don’t think there’s much in the way of ambiguity and other than the body parts (FOOT, EAR and HEAD), I didn’t really see any red herrings. Save for the purples, the category titles describe each group clearly, so I don’t have scope for a separate Answers Explained column today.
That’s all from me on the Connections front this week. I’ll be back with you here on Monday. In the meantime, you can find my weekend editions of this column at my newsletter, Pastimes.
P.S. I thought I might save this for an upbeat Monday song after it wormed it’s way back into my brain recently, but I changed my mind. I feel like we all need to go into this weekend in high spirits. So here’s the indelibly catchy “(Is This the Way to) Amarillo” as performed by Tony Christie back in 1971:
Have a great day! Stay hydrated! Be kind to yourself and each other! Call someone you love!
Please follow my blog for more NYT Connections hints and help with other word games, and even some video game news, insights and analysis. It helps me out a lot! Sharing this column with other people who play Connections would be appreciated too. You can also read my weekend editions of this column at my newsletter, Pastimes.