Today's puzzle is tricky and not about sharks.
Find our guide to New York Times Connections answers and hints for August 12 below.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #1,158. Only read on if you want to know today's Connections answers.
Plus, we're including a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #1,157, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.
Alternatively, visit our how to play NYT Connections guide for tips on how to solve the puzzle without our help.
What is Connections
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.
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.
Today's Connections answer — hints to help you solve it
Today's Connection Grid and Words
- Lemon
- Tree
- Harbor
- Fine Print
- Great White
- Green
- Goodbye
- Nurse
- Bull
- Bing
- Foster
- Scott
- Benes
- Okayama
- Poison Dart
- Maintain
We have the Connections categories below, but here's a hint without the actual titles. Try this out:
- 🟨 Yellow: Stay
- 🟩 Green: Not a toad
- 🟦 Blue: NBC Thursdays
- 🟪 Purple: Say yes.
Today's Connections Group Hints
If you need hints to solve the groupings, then here are the themes of each, based on the order of difficulty:
- 🟨 Yellow: Hold onto, as a feeling
- 🟩 Green: Kinds of frogs
- 🟦 Blue: NBC sitcom surnames
- 🟪 Purple: Starting with affirmative responses
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.
Today's Connections answers
The Connections answers on August 12 for puzzle #1,158 are slightly harder than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2.3 out of 5.
- 🟨 Hold onto, as a feeling: Foster, harbor, maintain, nurse
- 🟩 Kinds of frogs: Bull, green, poison dart, tree
- 🟦 NBC sitcom surnames: Benes, bing, lemon, scott
- 🟪 Starting with affirmative responses: Fine print, goodbye, great white, okayama
So, I took a strike on my first guess because I was chasing sharks with lemon, nurse, great white, and bull. Didn't even look around to see if they went elsewhere. Ah well.
I stuck with the animal theme after I got over the strike by chasing frogs with poison dart, tree, green and bull.
Benes (Seinfeld) and Bing (Friends) got me to the sitcoms, where I found Lemon (30 Rock) and Scott (The Office).
I noticed the feels of foster, harbor, maintain and nurse, but figured this set for yellow, so I saved those ones.
Instead, I put in the affirmative responses with fine print, goodbye, great white and okayama.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Doomed: Done, sunk, through, toast
- 🟩 Basic cable channels: Bet, bravo, history, usa
- 🟦 Words in an auctioneer's chant: Going, once, sold, twice
- 🟪 Homophones of facial features: Aye, hare, knows, tung
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #1,157, which had a difficulty rating of 2 out of 5.
I kind of sleepwalked through today's puzzle, but it did make me question how I pronounce at least one word.
USA and History are where I saw cable channels, which I followed up with BET and Bravo.
I wasn't sure about going, once, twice, sold, but I threw it in just to try. Quelle surprise.
Then I threw in the done, sunk, through, and toast because I saw it.
Which left homophone facial features of hare (hair), knows (nose) and tung (tongue). It did make me question how I say aye (eye), because I tend to think of it as having a long-a on the front, not the shorter a sound of eye. Also, the piratical aye-aye never came to mind until just now. Welp, let's move on from that embarrassment.
