Today’s Connections
Credit: NYT / Erik Kain
Somehow, we’re already a week into December. If you squint, you can see 2026 hurtling toward us and it’s coming fast. Christmas first, of course, and Jolly Ol’ Saint Nick. The next volume of Stranger Things on Netflix. Perhaps some holiday-themed Connections to solve as well.
Speaking of which, if you’re looking for help with today’s NYT Connections, you’ve come to the right place. Below, you’ll find some extra hints to help you guess the Yellow, Green, Blue and Purple groups, as well as the categories and, finally, the answers.
Be sure to also check out my latest weekend streaming guide for all the new TV shows and movies coming to Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+ and more.
Let’s solve today’s Connections!
If you’re looking for Saturday’s Connections guide, it’s right here.
How To Solve Today’s NYT Connections
How To Play Connections
Play Puzzles & Games on Forbes
Connections is the second-most popular NYT Games puzzle game outside of the main crossword itself, and an extremely fun, free offering that will get your brain moving every day. Play it right here.
The goal is to take a group of 16 words and find links between four pairs of four of them. They could be specific categories of terms, or they could be little world puzzles where words may come before or after them you need to figure out. And they get more complicated from there.
There is only one set of right answers for this, and you only get a certain number of tries so you can’t just spam around until you find something. There are difficulty tiers coded by color, which will usually go from yellow, blue/green to purple as difficulty increases, so know that going in and when you start linking them together.
You pick the four words you think are linked and either you will get a solve and a lit up row that shows you how you were connected. If you’re close, it will tell you that you’re one away. Again, four mistakes you lose, but if you want to know the answers without failing, either come here, or delete your web cookies and try again. If you want to play more puzzles, you can get an NYT Games subscription to access the full archives of all past puzzles.
NYT Connections Hints And Answers – Sunday, November 30
(Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
NurPhoto via Getty Images
These are the hints that are laid out on the puzzle board itself, but after that, we will get into spoiler territory with some hints and eventually the answers. First, here are today’s Connections words:
- HEART
- DOVETAIL
- BARREL
- CAPITAN
- MITRE
- GRECO
- TONGUE
- TRIPE
- PASO
- MORTISE
- TEAR
- BOLT
- DORADO
- DADO
- GIZZARD
- HURTLE
Hints for the Connections groups today are:
- 🟡Yellow group – Going really fast.
- 🔵Blue group – Terms for things carpenters and the like might work with.
- 🟢Green group – Inside your body.
- 🟣Purple group – You need to add a Spanish word to the beginning of each of these.
What Are Today’s Connections Groups?
Alright, the full spoilers follow here as we get into what the groups are today:
- 🟡Yellow group – Move at breakneck speed.
- 🔵Blue group – Woodworking joint terms.
- 🟢Green group – Organ meats.
- 🟣Purple group – El___
What Are Today’s Connections Answers?
The full-on answers are below for each group, finally inserting the four words in each category. Spoilers follow if you do not want to get this far. The Connections answers are:
- 🟡Yellow group – Barrel, Bolt, Hurtle, Tear
- 🔵Blue group – Dado, Dovetail, Mitre, Mortise
- 🟢Green group – Gizzard, Heart, Tongue, Tripe
- 🟣Purple group – Capitan, Dorado, Greco, Paso
Today’s Connections
Screenshot: Erik Kain
This is the first time in a very long time that I got the Purple Group first. Actually, nothing was very obvious to me right off the bat, but when I saw CAPITAN and DORADO I thought to myself “El Capitan” (the mountain in Yosemite) and “El Dorado” (the lost city of gold). It became quite clear I was onto something when I saw PASO, as in El Paso, the city in Texas. I wasn’t sure about the fourth, however, and tried DADO next (as in “El dado” – aka “a die” or “dice”). But it was El Greco – or Doménikos Theotokópoulos, the Greek painter known as El Greco and one of the chief architects of the Spanish Renaissance movement.
Curiously, the Green Group was the next one that caught my eye, largely thanks to TRIPE. I’ve had tripe tacos in Mexico, and I didn’t know what that was at the time, but it turns out it’s stomach lining. Tacos made from the stomach lining of cattle. Quite tasty, actually. You can probably also get tacos made out of GIZZARD, HEART or TONGUE, though I’ve never tried them.
I was a little less certain about these next ones. Clearly some are movement-based, but then DOVETAIL threw me off. That sounded like a movement word also. And others, like MITRE, are clearly woodworking terms, and you can make a BARREL out of wood (obviously). I got a couple wrong guesses before coming up with BARREL, BOLT, HURTLE and TEAR for the Yellow Group and then DADO, DOVETAIL, MITRE and MORTISE for the Blue Group. I suspect that this one was hard for a lot of people not familiar with woodworking terms.
How did you do on today’s Connections? Let me know on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.
Find more guides to Wordle, Strands and the Mini Crossword on my blog where you can also follow me for TV and movie and video game coverage. Read my weekend streaming guide right here.
