Today’s Connections
Credit: NYT / Erik Kain
Welcome back to the Sunday edition of our Connections guide, Connectioneers. This Sunday puts us almost exactly halfway through December. We’ve less than two weeks until Christmas. Just over that for New Year’s Eve. Time sure does fly when you’re solving puzzles every day!
Naturally, 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 best new TV shows and movies out on Netflix, Apple TV, Prime Video and all the other streaming services we subscribe to these days. You can also check out my guides for Wordle, Pips and Strands.
Without further ado, 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.
Connections Tips & Tricks
A few suggestions for success with your daily Connections.
First off, look for red herrings. These are words that seem to be connected, but are often part of some or each of the other groups. One way to spot these is if you come up with more than four. Words with double meanings – Blackberry could be part of a “fruit” group or tech companies; Palm could be a part of the hand or a type of tree – are often included in these misdirects.
Second, writing words out on paper can be very helpful. Something about the act of writing them out can cause your brain to form connections (this also applies to Strands when trying to unscramble words).
Finally, sound out words or think about them in terms of how they’re spelled or pronounced. Often, connections are made via homophones (or similar sounding words like “Mousse” and “Moose”) or there are secret words hidden within (“red” found within “bread”). If you’re having trouble making a connection, think about the words more mechanically – do they have silent letters? – or would they connect if another word was added to the front or back (Capitan and Dorado connect with the word “El” in front).
NYT Connections Hints And Answers – Sunday, December 14
Below, we’ll get into some extra hints for each Connections group – Yellow, Blue, Green and Purple – and then the official clues and answers.
Today’s Connections
Screenshot: Erik Kain
Here are today’s Connections words:
- Piglet
- Flatter
- Chalk
- Emperor
- Praise
- Babe
- Duckling
- Would
- Porky
- Mermaid
- Gush
- Colonel
- Princess
- Fawn
- Calf
- Napoleon
An Extra Hint for Each Connections Group
Here’s an extra hint to help you solve each Connections group today:
- 🟡Yellow group – Heap with praise.
- 🔵Blue group – Includes a silent letter.
- 🟢Green group – Characters from Dutch fairy tales.
- 🟣Purple group – Wilbur from Charlotte’s Web would fit right in.
One Word for Each Connections Group:
Here’s one word from each group to help get you started:
- 🟡Yellow group – Fawn
- 🔵Blue group – Calf
- 🟢Green group – Duckling
- 🟣Purple group – Babe
What Are Today’s Connections Groups?
Alright, the full spoilers follow here as we get into what the groups are today:
- 🟡Yellow group – Lay it on thick.
- 🔵Blue group –Silent “L”
- 🟢Green group – Hans Christian Andersen figures.
- 🟣Purple group – Fictional pigs.
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 – Fawn, Flatter, Gush, Praise
- 🔵Blue group – Calf, Chalk, Colonel, Would
- 🟢Green group – Duckling (ugly), Emperor (naked), Mermaid (little), Princess (and the pea)
- 🟣Purple group – Babe (Babe), Napoleon (Animal Farm), Piglet (Winnie the Pooh), Porky (Looney Tunes)
Today’s Connections
Screenshot: Erik Kain
Right off the bat, I have to wag my finger at the NYT puzzle setters for today’s Green Group. It’s Hans Christian Andersen – with an “e” – not Hans Christian Anderson with an “o.” I was actually struck by how many of these words seemed like they could fit into some story or other. Emperors and Piglets and Napoleon and some Colonel (Sanders, perhaps?)
I had to whittle down the choices, so I looked for other types of words and came across GUSH and PRAISE and FLATTER and it was only a small path to FAWN (even though that sounded like it belonged with CALF or PIGLET, perhaps). These were the Yellow words, and getting those out of the way made sorting the remaining words easier.
Soon I’d found commonality between various fictional fairy tale characters. The Ugly Duckling. The Emperor who wore no clothes, the Little Mermaid, the Princess and the Pea. This left me with a number of words that related to pigs and several that didn’t seem to relate to anything at all. It wasn’t until I started pronouncing them outloud that I saw the common thread: CALF, CHALK, COLONEL and WOULD all have silent L’s.
By this point, I already knew the connection between the Purple words. I’d simply forgotten about Napoleon from George Orwell’s Animal Farm.
Lots of little red herrings in today’s Connections. Baby animals – Calf, Fawn, Piglet, Babe – and leadership roles – Napoleon, Emperor, Colonel, Princess – but it was still only moderately difficult. It’s been ages since a Sunday Connections has been truly challenging. Ah well, one of these days.
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.
