Looking for clues for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on December 15 for puzzle #918 took a steep drop in difficulty compared to yesterday's puzzle, 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.
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: See, Monster, Quarter, One Hundred, Semi, Celsius, Bumper, Dump, Joint, Giant, Final, Hole, Titanic, Qualifier, Dive, and Cold
If you need hints to solve the groupings, then here are the themes of each, based on the order of difficulty:
- 🟨 Yellow: Tournament rounds
- 🟩 Green: Enormous
- 🟦 Blue: Disreputable establishment
- 🟪 Purple: What "c" might mean
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: A giant bell's wrung at the worst spot in town.
Today's Connections answers
So, what are today's Connections answers for game #918?
Drumroll, please...
- 🟨 Tournament rounds: Final, Qualifier, Quarter, Semi
- 🟩 Enormous: Bumper, Giant, Monster, Titanic
- 🟦 Disreputable establishment: Dive, Dump, Hole, Joint
- 🟪 What "C" might mean: Celsius, Cold, One Hundred, See
For being rated such an easy puzzle, I had a surprisingly hard time with today's. The sports-related words (Final, Qualifier, Quarter, Semi) stood out the most, so I figured I'd start there and snagged yellow.
I knew Giant, Monster, and Titanic were synonyms, but I struggled to figure out what could go along with them because it's been a minute since I've heard someone use Bumper in that context. Thankfully, it eventually came to me.
Celsius seemed the odd man out until I remembered Roman numerals and realized the other oddball, One Hundred, was tied to it. Cold took me a second, but I got there, and then spent an embarrassingly long time looking around before I realized See had been right there in front of me this whole time.
That left Dive, Dump, Hole, and Joint left as today's rote fill for blue.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Lay it on thick: Fawn, Flatter, Gush, Praise
- 🟩 Hans Christian Anderson Figures: Duckling, Emperor, Mermaid, Princess
- 🟦 Silent "L": Calf, Chalk, Colonel, Would
- 🟪 Fictional pigs: Babe, Napoleon, Piglet, Porky
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #917, which had a difficulty rating of 3 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.
I seesawed from either side of the board with today's puzzle. Yellow was easy enough to spot with a quartet of sycophantic synonyms: Fawn, Flatter, Gush, and Praise.
After I spotted Piglet and Porky, I was fairly certain if I looked around for more piggies to bring to market, I'd find them. Sure enough, Babe popped out immediately, followed by "Animal Farm's" Napoleon. Yes, I was one of those nerds in high school who genuinely enjoyed the readings. Why do you ask?
I already had cartoons on my mind, so Mermaid, Princess, and Emperor made me think of the house of mouse. I didn't spot any other Disney movies, but I did spot another fairy tale icon in Duckling.
That left blue as today's rote fill with Calf, Chalk, Colonel, and Would.
Connections tips — how to win at Connections
There are two ways to play Connections, get the answers as you solve them or solve for the hardest group, Purple, first.
For either playstyle, the best tip I can give is to not be afraid of the shuffle button, especially if you’ve solved a set but you’re certain it isn’t the Purple group. You can shuffle the grid until your solved quartet is in a somewhat staked off area.
For the purple group, you can expect to see a handful of category types: words missing a letter, homophones, words with specific suffixes or prefixes, and [blank] word (or word [blank]). There are others, but this is a majority of what you’ll see. It can help to look for purple connections through one of those lenses.
If you’re not hunting for purple specifically, then the best advice I have is to look for smaller connections. For example, Riddler and Joker are Batman villains. Once you’ve grouped that duo together it’s easier to find another set.
Finally, watch out for traps. Occasionally, the Connections makers like to throw in a set of words that should seem very obvious to most people. But picking them can give you a strike, something you want to save for when you aren’t really sure between a couple of clues.
The tricky bit is that sometimes the very obvious foursome is actually one of the answers (usually the yellow or green levels).
One way to work around this is to note the four clues you think are an obvious set. Highlight them by selecting the words but don’t hit submit. From there take a second look around the grid to see if anything else stands out to you.
Often these super obvious sets are actually individually spread out between the four groups. So, if you see Wick, Neo, Ted and Mnemonic, you might immediately think of Keanu Reeves movies, but it's a trick. Instead, use the individual words as launching points to discover other connections.
If you're new to the game you should also take a look at our How to play Connections guide.
Got some thoughts about today's puzzle you want to share? Email us at scott.younker@futurenet.com or alyse.stanley@futurenet.com to get in touch.
