Looking for clues for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on December 23 for puzzle #561 are a little easier than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 3 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, #560, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #561. 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: Boat, U, Bowl, M, Thou, Crew, V, You, 8, Ewe, Scoop, Glue, Tuesday, K, Grand, Yew
If you need hints to solve the groupings, then here are the themes of each, based on the order of difficulty:
- 🟨 Yellow: Homophones
- 🟩 Green: Necklines
- 🟦 Blue: Ways to express 1,000
- 🟪 Purple: Super ___
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: Dig back into your memory for grammar school lessons, high school fashion trends, and mathy headlines for a super time.
Today's Connections answers
So, what are today's Connections answers for game #561?
Drumroll, please...
- 🟨 Homophones: Ewe, U, Yew, You
- 🟩 Necklines: Boat, Crew, Scoop, V
- 🟦 Ways to express 1,000: Grand, K, M, Thou
- 🟪 Super ___: 8, Bowl, Glue, Tuesday
Today's clues were a hodgepodge of numbers and letters, but it was easy enough to spot the homophones among them, Ewe, U, Yew, and You, to cinch the easiest category. But that meant the pressure was on to figure out the more difficult categories.
Luckily, after I shuffled a few times, Glue and Bowl ended up close together and that got me thinking about super things, with 8 and Tuesday rounding out the rest of the category.
After that, I swung out a few times trying to connect all the single letters together, which turned out to be a dead end. Once I brainstormed other uses for V, then Boat, Crew, and Scoop stood out.
That left blue as today's rote fill with Grand, K, M, and Thou.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Slang for head: Coconut, Crown, Dome, Skull
- 🟩 Palindromes: Abba, Kayak, Nun, Stats
- 🟦 Police procedurals: Bones, Elementary, Kojak, Monk
- 🟪 First in a comedy duo: Abbott, Fry, Key, Laurel
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #560, which had a difficulty rating of 3.5 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.
I first saw a lot of TV show names, so I figured that'd be the best place to start, with Monk, Bones, Elementary, and Kojak rounding out the blue category.
After that came purple with Abbott, Fry, Key, and Laurel, as I'm a big fan of all the comedy duos listed even if some were before my time.
Yellow was surprisingly hard to solve today. Something about seeing Nun and Dome together had me thinking about religious structures, but once I saw other slang words like Coconut, Crown, and Skull it all came together.
That left only green as today's rote fill with Abba, Kayak, Nun, and Stats, all words that read the same spelled forward and backward.
