Looking for clues for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on December 11 for puzzle #549 are the lowest we've ever seen, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 1 out of 5.
Every day, we update this article with Connections hints and tips to help you find all 4 of today's answers so you can keep your Connections streak going. And if the clues aren't enough, you'll find all four answers below, with the category titles and the correlating words.
Plus, we're including a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #548, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #549. Only read on if you want to know today's Connections answers.
Alternatively, visit our how to play NYT Connections guide for tips on how to solve the puzzle without our help.
Today's Connections answer — hints to help you solve it
Unlike our guide to today's Wordle answer, where we recommend the best Wordle start words as your strategy, solving Connections relies on identifying connecting categories among 16 words. Each category's difficulty level is represented by a color; yellow is the easiest grouping, and purple is the most challenging. Once you've made 4 mistakes in your guesses, the answers will be revealed, so hints can be helpful.
Today's Connections words are: Hairspray, Rosebud, Pokemon, Primate, Xanadu, Jazzercise, Ketchum, Snowglobe, Paralympics, Paypal, Paradise, Wikipedia, Seventh Heaven, Salad Dressing, Magic 8 Ball, and Shangri-La.
If you need hints to solve the groupings, then here are the themes of each, based on the order of difficulty:
- 🟨 Yellow: Utopia
- 🟩 Green: Things you shake
- 🟦 Blue: Proper Noun Portmanteaux
- 🟪 Purple: Ending in synonyms for "friend"
These hints should get you at least some of the way towards finding today's Connections answers. If not, then you can read on for bigger clues; or, if you just want to know the answer, then scroll down further.
Here's a larger hint: Conjure up an oasis, give it a shake, call up a friend and slam some words together.
Today's Connections answers
So, what are today's Connections answers for game #549?
Drumroll, please...
- 🟨 Utopia: Paradise, Seventh Heaven, Shangri-La, Xanadu
- 🟩 Things you shake: Hairspray, Magic 8 Ball, Salad Dressing, Snowglobe
- 🟦 Proper noun portmanteaux: Jazzercise, Paralympics, Pokemon, Wikipedia
- 🟪 Ending in synonyms for "friend": Ketchum, Paypal, primate, Rosebud
A little behind the scenes for you but I usually start putting this guide together by checking the Connections Companion. Today's is rated a 1, a number I don't think I've ever seen for Connections ratings. Maybe a 1.8 but no lower. Twas a shock.
I'm not sure what makes this puzzle a 1 versus any other rating they've ever had, but it was a fairly quick solve.
I started with yellow because I saw Shangri-La and Xanadu. Both are paradises, so paradies and then seventh heaven w ere quick nabs.
I was looking at Magic 8 Ball and Hairspray and figured they were going for shakes thus snowglobe and salad dressing.
At this point I was overthinking it a bit and didn't immediately see the portmanteaux of the blue grouping. Jazzercise solved that problem which lead to Paralympics, Pokemon (Pocket Monsters for those unaware) and Wikipedia.
Thus we ended with buddies for Ket(chum), Pay(pal), pri(mate) and rose(bud).
Was it a 1? I don't know, but it's interesting what they consider a 1 versus a 3 or 4.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Give a little to: Call, dub, label, name
- 🟩 Parts of a flight: Cruise, takeoff, taxi, touchdown
- 🟦 Feel around (for): Fish, fumble, root, rummage
- 🟪 Countries minus first letter: Inland, Olivia, Ran, Wanda
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #548, which had a difficulty rating of 3.8 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.
I admit to struggling with today because I kept seeing the start of connections but finding that there wasn't anything there. An example was seeing Cruise and Touchdown, I was thinking of Toms (Tom Cruise and "Touchdown" Tom Brady). I had a lot of small two term groups going. Staying with Football, I was looking at touchdown, dub and fumble as possible terms, in another example.
My day started for real with the yellow category. I found name and label first. Call also worked but it took a moment for dub to click because I was thinking of it as the slang for a win, "getting the dub."
Root and rummage stuck out to me, and I liked fish as well. I didn't like fumble, because I thought it meant more hapless looking than the other three implied, but that's my internal definition I suppose.
We finally knocked out the green category with Cruise, takeoff, taxi and touchdown. Being stuck on football really delayed my thinking here.
And purple, my least favorite style of purple grouping where its a word minus a letter or group of letters. We have (F)inland, (B)olivia, (I)ran, and (R)wanda. I admit that my issue with this specific purple genre is that I never mentally reach that place of subtraction, instead I look at the word as it is to see how it connects to the other words in the puzzle with what's on the page and not what's missing or could be added. That is a me-problem. Perhaps you'll solve this one easier than I.
