This blog post discusses the New York Times’ daily word puzzle game, Connections, providing hints, group classifications, and finally, the solutions for the December 26th puzzle. The author begins by expressing their enthusiasm for gaming and teasing their upcoming “best games of 2024” list. They also invite readers to join their newly created Discord server for discussing Connections and other topics.
The post then explains the rules of Connections. Players are presented with a grid of 16 words and must group them into four sets of four based on shared connections. These connections can be semantic relationships, shared properties, or even wordplay. The game has a color-coded difficulty system, with yellow being the easiest and purple the hardest. Players have four attempts to correctly identify the groups, and incorrect guesses result in lost lives. The post also mentions the availability of an archive for NYT subscribers, allowing them to revisit past puzzles. For those without a subscription, the author offers a searchable archive of their own hints and solutions.
For the December 26th puzzle, the author lists the 16 words: TIDY, ALA, HANDSOME, ELDER, SPRUCE, LIKE, PINE, MISS, HEALTHY, ROUGHLY, ARK, PALM, ABOUT, RESPECTABLE, ORE, and AROUND. Hints are then provided for each group: “more or less” for yellow, “large flora” for green, “plenty” for blue, and “certain locations, for short” for purple. This section builds anticipation before revealing the actual categories.
Following the hints, the post reveals the categories without specifying which words belong to each group. The yellow group is “approximately,” green is “trees,” blue is “sizeable, as an amount,” and purple is “U.S. state abbreviations, per AP Style Guide.” This intermediary step allows players to try and solve the puzzle with a bit more guidance before seeing the full solution.
Finally, the solutions are revealed: ABOUT, AROUND, LIKE, and ROUGHLY for “approximately”; ELDER, PALM, PINE, and SPRUCE for “trees”; HANDSOME, HEALTHY, RESPECTABLE, and TIDY for “sizeable, as an amount”; and ALA, ARK, MISS, and ORE for “U.S. state abbreviations.” The author shares their personal experience with the puzzle, mentioning a near-perfect game marred by a misclick, and highlights the trickiest category—the U.S. state abbreviations based on the Associated Press Stylebook.
The author concludes by referencing their ongoing winning streak and analyzing their approach to the puzzle. They acknowledge the potential difficulty of the purple group, particularly for those unfamiliar with AP style abbreviations. The blog post encourages readers to return for future Connections hints and answers and offers some personal recommendations, including a song and some general life advice. They promote their blog for more word game and video game content and encourage followers on Bluesky. The post demonstrates the author’s passion for gaming and their commitment to providing a helpful resource for fellow Connections enthusiasts.
