NEW Connections Today Tips and Answers — Wednesday, December 18 (#556)

On December 18, 2024By Littum

Looking for clues to today’s Connections answers? The December 18th Connections answers for puzzle #556 are a tad harder than yesterday’s puzzle, with Connections Companion rate this puzzle’s difficulty 3.3 out of 5.

Each day we’ll 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 associated words.

Plus, we’re including a reflection on yesterday’s puzzle, #555, if you’re reading this in a different time zone.

Spoilers ahead for Connections #556. Read on only if you want to know today’s Connections answer.

Alternatively, visit our guide on how to play NYT Connections for tips on how to solve the puzzle without our help.

Today’s Connections answer — tips to help you solve it

New York Times Connections Puzzle December 18, 2024

(Image credit: New York Times)

Unlike our guide to today’s Wordle answers, where we recommend the best Wordle starter words as your strategy, solving Connections relies on identifying connection 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. After you make 4 mistakes in your guesses, the answers will be revealed so hints can be helpful.

Today’s Connections words are: Tackle, Teapot, Hold, Onion, Card, Field, Bump, Hedge, Handle, Sour, Trade, Capitol, Bitter, Chrome, Manage and Bock

If you need tips on solving the groupings, here are the themes for each, based on difficulty:

Yellow: Handle
Green: Styles of beer
Blue: Investment verbs
Purple: ____ Dome

These tips should at least help you find today’s Connections answer. If not, then read on for bigger clues; or, if you just want to know the answer, scroll further down.

Here’s a bigger tip: Get a brewing deal with the stock market and take a trip out to the dome.

Today’s Connections answer

So what is today’s Connections answer to game #556?

Drumroll, please…

Deal with: Marke, handle, manage, tackle
Styles of beer: Bitter, bock, sour, stout
Investment verbs: Hedge, Hold, Card, Trade
____ Dome: Capitol, chrome, onion, teapot

It’s interesting to me that so far this week has stayed solidly at difficulty 3. It’s rare that you get a solid week on a similar difficulty.

For me, I saw Bock and knew there was a beer group in this puzzle. Stout and Sour are the more obvious from there. I tend to forget the English style of Bitter beer as American breweries are obsessed with IPAs which tend to be bitter on all levels.

Going with the flow, so I handle and manage. Field and tackle fit here, but it feels like tangential synonyms and not direct, but also makes sense as the yellow group compared to other three categories.

From there I saw hedge and thought stocks which led to hold, short and trade.

We packed it with domes, including two architectural domes (Capital and Onion), a Scandal (Teapot), and a Cold War nickname or operation run by the US Air Force (Chrome dome).

Yesterday’s Connections response

Intrepidity: Grit, heart, nerve, pluck
Way: Artery, avenue, drag, drive
Paper types: Construction, graph, tissue, wax
Types of tennis courts: Carpet, clay, grass, hard

Are you reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #555, which had a difficulty rating of 3.2 out of 5, according to Connections Companion.

Today felt difficult for me, but we got it.

This Connections grid suggests some internal body part groupings, so it’s one trap. It also suggests modeling with wax and clay and perhaps tissue or construction. So these are some groupings to avoid.

I nipped purple only after seeing clay, hard and grass. I recognized them as tennis courts. The only reason I chose carpet was that nothing else would fit, but as some quick research reminded me, carpet is banned as a playing surface in tennis. Purple actually.

I got stuck on tissue as the organic expression before landing on tissue paper (while staring at the Christmas presents I have to wrap). This opened up the puzzle for me and I could see wax paper, graph paper and construction paper.

What I didn’t mention above was the number of strikes I took early on trying to put yellow together because I had grit, heart, nerve and drive. Hit one. For some reason I literally didn’t see the word pick and replaced drive with hard (why?). Strike 2. I moved away from this group where I found the tennis court. Here, plucks finally appeared from the ether and I saved this run.

Which left roads or descriptions of roads; artery, avenue, drag and drive.