Looking for clues for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on December 15 for puzzle #553 are much tougher compared to yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 3.4 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, #552, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #553. 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.
Today's Connections words are: Thumb, Key, Leaf, Style, Mace, mar, Flail, Flip, Spear, Clove, Tank, Pepper, Riffle, Flounder, Nutmeg, Flop.
If you need hints to solve the groupings, then here are the themes of each, based on the order of difficulty:
- 🟨 Yellow: Spices
- 🟩 Green: Perform poorly
- 🟦 Blue: Skim through, as pages
- 🟪 Purple: Pop singers minus "s"
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: You'll strike out if you let the aromatic clues distract you from what's missing. Consult your rolodex of pop icons.
Today's Connections answers
So, what are today's Connections answers for game #553?
Drumroll, please...
- 🟨 Spices: Clove, Mace, Nutmeg, Pepper
- 🟩 Perform poorly: Flail, Flop, Flounder, Tank
- 🟦 Skim through as pages: Flip, Leaf, Riffle, Thumb
- 🟪 Pop singers minus 'S': Key, Mar, Spear, Style
The first words that stuck out to me in today's puzzle were the most violent ones: Mace, Flail, and Spear. But when I couldn't find a fourth to complete the arsenal, I suspected I may have fell for a red herring. And I was right! Once I saw Nutmeg, Clove, and Pepper, it hit me that the Connections Crew meant the spice Mace, not the clobbering kind.
Riffle stood out next (I mistook it for rifle at first), and I've only ever heard it used in terms of searching through books, so Flip, Leaf, and Thumb were easy enough to pick up.
Flail, Flop, and Flounder came next because of the alliteration, with Tank rounding out the category.
That left purple as today's rote fill with Key, Mar, Spear, and Style — all pop star names made singular by substracting the 's' at the end.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Fish: Fluke, Mullet, Sole, Tang
- 🟩 Words in an auction-ending phrase: Going, Once, Sold, Twice
- 🟦 Global Currencies: Pound, Real, Sol, Yuan
- 🟪 Words before "cup": Butter, Diva, Solo, World
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #552, which had a difficulty rating of 3 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.
As I was perusing the grid I saw Sole, Sol and Solo and knew they wouldn't connect to each other. For me this trio of words stuck out to me as a fish, a currency and I thought at first something with singing having seen diva.
So, I had fish knocked out immediately with Fluke, Mullet, Sole and Tang. Quickly followed by currencies with Pound (United Kingdom), Real (Brazil), Sol (Peru) and Yuan (China).
I had an idea of what I thought purple was with Solo and Diva after finding the other two. But as I was looking over the last 8 words the grid had fallen in such a way that it read Going, Once, Twice, Sold. I didn't really believe that the auction words were actually a group but did it as a lark.
Lo and behold, the green category was filled.
Which left the Butter (cup), Diva (cup), Solo (cup) and World (cup) to mop up.
