NYT ‘Connections’ Hints And Answers For Sunday, December 15

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

Hey there! I hope you’re having the very best weekend imaginable.

I’m still buzzing about many of the games that were revealed at The Game Awards the other night (I had a lot of fun covering the news with my colleagues too). It was a good show overall, thanks to looks at new projects from the likes of Naughty Dog and word of an Okami sequel. I wasn’t disappointed that there was no Grand Theft Auto VI news — in fact, I think the show didn’t need that because it had such a strong showing this year.

Before we get started, I’ve started a discussion group for Connections and this column on Discord. You can chat about each game (and other topics) with me and other folks. I’m always curious how other people approach the game, so join us! It’ll be fun.

It’s also the best way to give me any feedback about the column, especially on the rare(!) occasions that I mess something up.

Today’s NYT Connections hints and answers for Sunday, December 15, 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…

• THUMB
• KEY
• LEAF
• STYLE
• MACE
• MAR
• FLAIL
• FLIP
• SPEAR
• CLOVE
• TANK
• PEPPER
• RIFFLE
• FLOUNDER
• NUTMEG
• FLOP

And the hints for today’s Connections groups are:

• Yellow group — flavorings
• Green group — mess up
• Blue group — quickly peruse a book or newspaper
• Purple group — big-name performers. but a little shorter

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 — spices
• Green group — perform poorly
• Blue group — skim through, as pages
• Purple group — pop singers minus “S”

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 — spices (CLOVE, MACE, NUTMEG, PEPPER)
• Green group — perform poorly (FLAIL, FLOP, FLOUNDER, TANK)
• Blue group — skim through, as pages (FLIP, LEAF, RIFFLE, THUMB)
• Purple group — pop singers minus “S” (KEY, MAR, SPEAR, STYLE)

Hey now, that’s back-to-back perfect games this weekend. I’ll take that. Here’s how I fared:

🟩🟩🟩🟩

🟨🟨🟨🟨

🟪🟪🟪🟪

🟦🟦🟦🟦

I wondered for a second if there might be something to go with MACE, FLAIL and SPEAR for a group of medieval weapons. It was evidently a red herring, and nothing else really fit anyway.

So I considered alternate meanings for each word. That led me to getting the greens and yellows pretty quickly.

I thought the blues seemed very obvious once I was down to the last eight words. Since I like to file away the purples as soon as possible, I submitted those first even though I didn’t figure out the connection. That left the blues for a comfortable win.

For the record, the purples refer to Alicia KEYs, Bruno MARs, Britney SPEARs and Harry STYLEs.

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 Monday’s game if you need them.

P.S. I can’t exactly run with a Harry Styles song recommendation since I included one yesterday. So let’s go with a Keys track instead. I still love her debut single “Fallin’.” It was a big hit and won Keys three Grammy awards:

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.