Looking for clues for today's Connections answers? The Connections answer on December 31 for puzzle #934 is the same difficulty as yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2.5 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: Sound Barrier, Champagne Flute, Rocky, Sea Bass, Bermuda Triangle, Noisemaker, Liberty Bell, Dryer, Fireworks, Couch Cushions, Channel Surf, Cheesesteak, Black Hole, Bay Leaf, Brotherly Love, and Ball Drop
If you need hints to solve the groupings, then here are the themes of each, based on the order of difficulty:
- 🟨 Yellow: Happy New Year!
- 🟩 Green: Places where things disappear
- 🟦 Blue: Associated with Philadelphia
- 🟪 Purple: Starting with bodies of water
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: Don't lose next year's resolution in the Delaware River.
Today's Connections answers
So, what are today's Connections answers for game #934?
Drumroll, please...
- 🟨 Happy New Year!: Ball Drop, Champagne Flute, Fireworks, Noisemaker
- 🟩 Places where things disappear: Bermuda Triangle, Black Hole, Couch Cushions, Dryer
- 🟦 Associated with Philadelphia: Brotherly Love, Cheesesteak, Liberty Bell, Rocky
- 🟪 Starting with bodies of water: Bay Leaf, Channel Surf, Sea Bass, Sound Barrier
Anyone else play way too much Animal Crossing: New Horizons during lockdown and get jump scared by Sea Bass? (No, wait — it's at least a C+!) That and Bay Leaf caught my eye first for some reason, and my suspicion toward them only grew when I noticed Channel Surf could fall into their shared double entendre. But you don't hear Sound as much as Bay or Channel in everyday conversation unless you grow up near the coast, making Sound Barrier a bit trickier to spot.
I liked the festive approach the Connections crew took with today's yellow category, all symbols we associate with New Year's Eve: Ball Drop, Champagne Flute, Fireworks, and Noisemaker.
Brotherly Love could only be one thing, so I went hunting for a few other tropes about the city I'd gleaned from "It's Always Sunny" and "Abbott Elementary" to solve blue with Brotherly Love, Cheesesteak, Liberty Bell, and Rocky. Go birds.
That left Bermuda Triangle, Black Hole, Couch Cushions, and Dryer as today's rote fill for green.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Intention: Aim, Goal, Object, Point
- 🟩 Measuring devices: Clock, Compass, Ruler, Scale
- 🟦 Parts of a flight: Climb, Takeoff, Taxi, Touchdown
- 🟪 Bike accessories: Basket, Bell, Rack, Reflector
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #933, which had a difficulty rating of 2.3 out of 5.
I went down the line in reverse today. I'm an avid biker, so when I saw Reflector, I had only one thing in mind. I scooped up Bell and Rack after taking a look around, though it took me longer than I'd care to admit to recognize Basket belonged among them too.
With all the traveling I've done this year, Takeoff and Touchdown had me thinking about nightmare airports of holiday trips past. Taxi wasn't as obvious but seemed to fit the bill, as did Climb.
The remaining clues had enough math-related words to almost have me breaking out in a sweat until I realized the actual connection was more utilitarian with Clock, Compass, Ruler, and Scale for green.
That left a quartet of synonyms for yellow: Aim, Goal, Object, and Point.
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.
