Looking for clues for today's Connections answers? The Connections answers on December 19 for puzzle #557 are the same difficulty as yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 3.3 out of 5.
Every day, we update this article with Connections hints and tips to help you find all 4 of today's answers 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, #556, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #557. 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: Tap, Tug, Keg, Barrel, Table, Sub, Barge, Hammer, Counter, Ladder, Gorilla and Shelve.
If you need hints to solve the groupings, then here are the themes of each, based on the order of difficulty:
- 🟨 Yellow: Defer
- 🟩 Green: Bar fixtures
- 🟦 Blue: Watercraft
- 🟪 Purple: Seen in "Donkey Kong"
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: Play some Donkey Keg, pour a beer and make way for a boat.
Today's Connections answers
So, what are today's Connections answers for game #557?
Drumroll, please...
- 🟨 Defer: Delay, postpone, shelve, table
- 🟩 Bar fixtures: Counter, keg, stool, tap
- 🟦 Watercraft: Barge, junk, sub, tug
- 🟪 Seen in "Donkey Kong": Barrel, gorilla, hammer, ladder
Another three to get us through the week.
To kick things off I saw Junk and my first thought was boat as in the the flat-bottomed Chinese sailing ship. Tug and sub both leapt out from there and then I had to hunt down barge. Fortunately the last three were next to one another.
I saw the yellow category and removed it mostly to get it out of the way. This one included delay, postpone, shelve and table.
My first thought was something with Keg and Barrel but that didn't work, it did lead me to seeing barrel and gorilla and recalling Donkey Kong. From there we got to hammer and ladder.
Which left bar fixtures; counter, keg, stool and tap as the mop up.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Deal with: Field, handle, manage, tackle
- 🟩 Styles of beer: Bitter, bock, sour, stout
- 🟦 Investment verbs: Hedge, hold, short, trade
- 🟪 ____ Dome: Capitol, Chrome, Onion, Teapot
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #556, which had a difficulty rating of 3.3 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.
It's interesting to me that this week has, so far, stayed solidly in the 3 level of difficulty. It's rare that you get a solid week of similarly difficulty puzzles.
For me, I saw bock and knew there was a beer grouping in this puzzle. Stout and Sour are the more obvious ones from there. I do tend to forget about the English-style of Bitter beers since American breweries are obsessed with IPAs which tend to be bitter at every level.
Going with the flow, I saw handle and manage. Field and tackle fits here but it feels like tangential synonyms and not direct ones, but also makes sense as the yellow group compared to other three categories.
From there, I saw hedge and was thinking stocks which led to hold, short and trade.
We wrapped it up with domes including two architectural domes (capitol and onion), a scandal (Teapot) and a nickname or Cold War era operation run by the US Air Force (Chrome dome).
