NYT Connections today hints and answers — Monday, December 30 (#568)

NYTimes Connections
(Image credit: Future)

Looking for clues for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on December 30 for puzzle #568 are harder compared to 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, #567, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.

Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #568. 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

New York Times Connections puzzle December 30 2024

(Image credit: New York Times)

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: Pink, Pony, Club, Airplane, Grinder, Water, Ante, Hero, Wrap, Settle, Jeopardy, Beans, Yahoo, Melt, and Cough.

If you need hints to solve the groupings, then here are the themes of each, based on the order of difficulty:

  • 🟨 Yellow: Lunch orders
  • 🟩 Green: Used to make coffee
  • 🟦 Blue: Pay with "up"
  • 🟪 Purple: Names featuring "!"

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: Grab a sando and a cuppa, before paying with excitement.

Today's Connections answers

So, what are today's Connections answers for game #568?

Drumroll, please...

  • 🟨 Lunch Orders: Club, Hero, Melt, Wrap
  • 🟩 Used to make coffee: Beans, filter, grinder, water
  • 🟦 Pay, with "up": Ante, cough, pony, settle
  • 🟪 Names featuring "!": Airplane, Jeopardy, Pink, Yahoo

I was hungry when I started today's puzzle and immediately clocked sandwiches with hero, melt, wrap and initially I put grinder. Strike one. Swapped out wrap for club. Strike 2. 

Finally, looked around a bit more and made the coffee connections with beans, filter, grinder and water. Then we went back for the sandos.

Which left me staring at ante and settle, which had me thinking poker. I made the connection to pony and was stuck a minute before finally seeing cough for what it was. 

Which left the final group of things with ! in the name. Airplane, Jeopardy, P!nk and Yahoo. I actually had the right idea for all four but was not making the punctuation connection, which is partly why they lasted to so long.

Yesterday's Connections answers

  • 🟨 Shades of red: Brick, cherry, maroon, ruby
  • 🟩 Appointment specifications: Date, duration, location, time
  • 🟦 Different amounts of hair: Head, lock, strand, wisp
  • 🟪 Tree homophones: Beach, fur, pair, you

Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #567, which had a difficulty rating of 2 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.

Nice and relaxing one today.

Early on I saw maroon and ruby, so was looking for other shades of Crayolas. Brick and cherry followed soon after.

Strand and wisp seemed similar to me leading me to the hair idea with lock and then head. I briefly considered fur but mostly because I didn't see head right away.

Appointments stuck out to me with date, location and time. Duration rounded it out.

And we wrapped it up with tree homophones; Beach (beech), fur (fir), pair (pear), and you (yew).

Enjoy the final Saturday of 2024.

Scott Younker
West Coast Reporter

Scott Younker is the West Coast Reporter at Tom’s Guide. He covers all the lastest tech news. He’s been involved in tech since 2011 at various outlets and is on an ongoing hunt to build the easiest to use home media system. When not writing about the latest devices, you are more than welcome to discuss board games or disc golf with him. 

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