Today’s Connections Hints & Answers For December 07, 2024 (Puzzle #545)

Sometimes the right answers to a Connections puzzle can be quite difficult to lure out, but with a little bit of help, you can get to the end of it with a smooth victory. The first two categories are fairly straightforward, but the last two are not and that makes it very frustrating. It is always hard when you get a good start to a puzzle and feel good about it and get stuck in the last half knowing you only have to get one more category.

If you want to try something that is reminiscent of childhood but with the challenge of something more geared to adults, the NYT’s The Strands puzzle is right in that sweet spot. It is a word search, much like the ones you probably colored in in school, but it is more difficult and is usually themed with something famous in pop culture, such as Poe’s The Raven. This makes it a fun and interesting challenge to take on, particularly for the nostalgia.

Today’s Connections Category Hints

DECEMBER 07 #545

Getting the right answers is a lot easier if you have a nudge in the right direction. This is particularly true with some of the later categories, which will be easier if you at least know what you have to aim for. Getting to that point is always the biggest challenge, so use these clues to help you get there and perhaps the rest of the way too.

One category is about the way you usually connect words in this puzzle
One category is about the different ways you can get an animal to come to you
One category is about four different groups that are all part of the same association
One category is about four words that can come after one word in a phrase – that word is usually a descriptor of size

To get the rest of the way there, you may need a few more nudges. To help you out with that, here are all of the category names.

Today’s Connections Answers

DECEMBER 07 #545

Yellow Answers: Revealed & Explained

If you have been playing Connections for any amount of time, you know that this is the way most games are played. You have to get the right words put together, and you do that based on how they RELATE to each other. Unfortunately, you might not always know how to ASSOCIATE every single word, or they might have more than one AFFILIATE word, which is what makes this game hard. However, this category was fairly easy, even if things got harder later.

Green Answers: Revealed & Explained

This one also felt fairly straightforward, as I saw CHUM and BAIT and was fairly certain where it was going from there. I was a little worried that FLY was not the right word, but luckily, when I submitted the guess, it was correct. Figuring things out took a little bit of time, but nothing crazy, and I was feeling good about this puzzle at this point. However, that all came to an end when I had to face the next category which is, of course, my greatest weakness.

Blue Answers: Revealed & Explained

It was a fairly good thing that I was not asked to cover the new Sports-only version of Connections, but if you always get the categories that I fail, you should check it out! For me, however, any sports category has traditionally been my downfall in these puzzles, with a few exceptions. I did almost get this one solely off of a few of these words all being associated with Greek mythology, but that was not quite enough to get me all the way there.

Purple Answers: Revealed & Explained

I likely would have gotten all of these with the knowledge that they were all supposed to be paired with this word, but without that knowledge and with me struggling to pair up words based on mythological symbols instead of team names, it would have been miraculous if I had gotten this far. Maybe one of these days I will realize that the category I am staring at might be a bunch of team names and look them up, but that has yet to happen and probably won’t any time soon.

Other Games Like Connections

If you still want to try your hand at another puzzle, you should check out the following games. Some are harder, like Primel which is numbers-based, and some are a fun twist on a popular game, like Crosswordle.