NYT Connections today hints and answers — Saturday, November 30 (#538)

NYTimes Connections
(Image credit: Future)

Looking for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on November 30 for puzzle #538 are a bit 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. And if the hints 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, #537, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.

Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #538. 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.

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

  • 🟨 Yellow: Dance Styles
  • 🟩 Green: Steal
  • 🟦 Blue: Perform well on
  • 🟪 Purple: ____ Ball pitches

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: Steal home on a bad pitch and kill 'em with a solid dance.

Today's Connections answers

So, what are today's Connections answers for game #538?

Drumroll, please...

  • 🟨 Dance styles: Jazz, modern, swing, tap
  • 🟩 Steal: Lift, palm, pocket, swipe
  • 🟦 Perform well on: Ace, crush, nail, rock
  • 🟪 ____ Ball pitches: Curve, fast, knuckle, screw

Between MLB mascots yesterday and the purple category today, the Connections Crew is in a baseball mindset deep into November.

Anyway, I saw knuckle and thought pitch. This quickly led to fastball, curveball and screwball. Purple out.

Still thinking baseball, I saw swipe and was thinking about stealing bases so I went with that for lift, palm and pocket.

Ace, crush and nail stuck out to me here for killing it but I wasn't sure about rock because I was looking at jazz and modern for a music grouping. Nothing else seemed to fit for the blue category save rock. And it did.

Somehow, ended on yellow with dance styles; jazz, modern, swing and tap. It's always interesting what categories different minds see first. I wonder what the statistical difference is between people who made the yellow connection before they made the purple one. Unlike Wordle, I'm not sure if connections has those kind of overall stats.

Yesterday's Connections answers

Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #537, which had a difficulty rating of 3.3 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.

Got a late start on this one thanks to Turkey day, but it was the right speed for a post-gluttony holiday.

I kicked it off with the blue category and baseball teams seeing Ray, Twin, Tiger and National.

Yellow came next seeing project and venture which lead to enterprise and endeavor. Though the first two I was initially saving for hopefully a space ship theme. No luck.

Hertz, second and volt made sense as a group but I'm still not sure what a mole is a measurement of. I think it's base around chemistry which I was absolutely awful in school.

And we wrapped it up with Boardwalk (Empire), Curb (Your Enthusiasm), Game (of Thrones) and Silicon (Valley) all fairly good HBO shows.

Don't hurt your wallet too much on Black Friday sales.

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.