NYT 'Connections' Hints And Answers For Wednesday, December 11

Find the links between the words to win today's game of Connections.

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

ForbesNYT ‘Connections’ Hints And Answers For Tuesday, December 10By Kris Holt

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

A quick heads up for the gamers out there: the latest Day of the Devs event takes place today. It happens a couple of times a year and it’s always a great showcase of indie games. I can’t wait to see what’s in store this time around. You can check it out starting at noon ET on Twitch and YouTube.

Today’s NYT Connections hints and answers for Wednesday, December 11, are coming right up.

How To Play Connections

Connections is a free, popular New York Times daily word game. You get a new puzzle at midnight every day. You can play on the NYT website or Games app.

You’re presented with a grid of 16 words. Your task is to arrange them into four groups of four by figuring out the links between them. The groups could be things like items you can click, names for research study participants or words preceded by a body part.

There’s only one solution for each puzzle, and you’ll need to be careful when it comes to words that might fit into more than one category. You can shuffle the words to perhaps help you see links between them.

Each group is color coded. The yellow group is usually the easiest to figure out, blue and green fall in the middle, and the purple group is usually the most difficult one. The purple group often involves wordplay.

Select four words you think go together and press Submit. If you make a guess and you’re incorrect, you’ll lose a life. If you’re close to having a correct group, you might see a message telling you that you’re one word away from getting it right, but you’ll still need to figure out which one to swap.

If you make four mistakes, it’s game over. Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen with the help of some hints, and, if you’re really struggling, today’s Connections answers. As with Wordle and other similar games, it’s easy to share results with your friends on social media and group chats.

If you have an NYT All Access or Games subscription, you can access the publication’s Connections archive. This includes every previous game of Connections, so you can go back and play any of those that you have missed.

Aside from the first 60 games or so, you should be able to find my hints for each grid via Google if you need them! Just click here and add the date of the game for which you need clues or the answers to the search query.

What Are Today’s Connections Hints?

Scroll slowly! Just after the hints for each of today’s Connections groups, I’ll reveal what the groups are without immediately telling you which words go into them.

Today’s 16 words are...

HAIRSPRAY ROSEBUD POKÉMON PRIMATE XANADU JAZZERCISE KETCHUM SNOWGLOBE PARALYMPICS PAYPAL PARADISE WIKIPEDIA SEVENTH HEAVEN SALAD DRESSING MAGIC 8 BALL SHANGRI-LA

And the hints for today’s Connections groups are:

Yellow group — nirvana, Eden, wonderland Green group — do with these as Taylor Swift does with players and haters (who gonna play, play, play and hate, hate, hate) Blue group — smushed together Purple group — What Are Today’s Connections Groups?

Need some extra help?

Be warned: we’re starting to get into spoiler territory.

Today’s Connections groups are...

Yellow group — utopia Green group — things you shake Blue group — proper noun portmanteaux Purple group — ending in synonyms for "friend" What Are Today’s 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 final warning!

Today’s Connections answers are...

Yellow group — utopia (PARADISE, SEVENTH HEAVEN, SHANGRI-LA, XANADU) Green group — things you shake (HAIRSPRAY, MAGIC 8 BALL, SALAD DRESSING, SNOWGLOBE) Blue group — proper noun portmanteaux (JAZZERCISE, PARALYMPICS, POKÉMON, WIKIPEDIA) Purple group — ending in synonyms for "friend" (KETCHUM, PAYPAL, PRIMATE, ROSEBUD)

And just like that, my streak is over after 13 wins. Here's how I fared:

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A very interesting collection of words today! I was able to knock off the yellows quickly at least.

Between ROSEBUD and SNOWGLOBE, I figured there might be some kind of Citizen Kane-related group. Or maybe even a group of movie MacGuffins (otherwise irrelevant items or events used as central plot devices in fiction). PAYPAL and WIKIPEDIA, meanwhile, hinted at a group of Internet services. And all I knew KETCHUM from was the protagonist of POKÉMON for many years, Ash Ketchum.

But as I looked at the words more closely I realized that a few of them ended in alternate words for friend. Aha! Purples cleared. I felt comfortable giving an easier clue for that group today since the blues were tough. I also loved that these words literally have a friend in them, so I couldn't resist.

I didn't have a clue after that, though. I tried a guess of PARALYMPICS, HAIRSPRAY, SALAD DRESSING and SNOWGLOBE, which put me one away from a group. I swapped out SALAD DRESSING for JAZZERCISE and then HAIRSPRAY for WIKIPEDIA, neither of which gave me the "one away" pop up.

I didn't see where to go at all, so I dropped SNOWGLOBE in favor of MAGIC 8 BALL. That brought my streak to an end.

The greens probably should have clicked, even though I literally never buy SALAD DRESSING (ew, gross). SNOWGLOBE and MAGIC 8 BALL should have been enough to figure that out.

As for the blues, it feels a little mean to have two wordplay groups in the same game. They relate to jazz exercise, paraplegic and Olympic, pocket monsters and wiki and encyclopedia. I would imagine a whole lot of people are going to be annoyed about this group.

That’s all there is to it for today’s Connections clues and answers. Be sure to check my blog for hints and the solution for Thursday’s game if you need them.

P.S. This popped up in my YouTube recommendations the other day and I enjoyed it immensely. It's a live orchestral performance of one of the best songs of all time, Daft Punk's "One More Time." Great stuff:

Have a great day! Call someone you love!

If you’re so inclined, please do follow my blog for more coverage of Connections and other word games and even some video game news, insights and analysis. It helps me out a lot! Also, follow me on Bluesky! It’s fun there.