NEW Connections Today Tips and Answers — Sunday, December 15 (#553)

On December 15, 2024By Littum

Looking for clues to today’s Connections answer? The December 15th Connections answers for puzzle #553 are much tougher compared to yesterday’s puzzle, with Connections Companion rate this puzzle’s difficulty 3.4 out of 5.

Every 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, #552, if you’re reading this in a different time zone.

Spoilers ahead for Connections #553. 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 15 Dec 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: Thumb, Key, Blade, Stil, Mace, Mar, Flail, Flip, Spear, Fat, Tank, Pepper, Rifle, Scrub, Nutmeg, Flop.

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

Yellow: Condiments
Green: Performs poorly
Blue: Skim through, like pages
Purple: Pop singers minus the “s”

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: You’ll knock out if you let the aromatic trails distract you from what’s missing. Consult your Rolodex of pop icons.

Today’s Connections answer

So what is today’s Connections answer to game #553?

Drumroll, please…

Spices: Down, nutmeg, pepper, nutmeg
Performs poorly: Flail, Flop, Flounder, Tank
Skim through as pages: Flip, Blade, Rifle, Thumb
Pop singers minus the ‘S’: Key, Mar, Spear, Style

The first words that jumped out at me in today’s puzzle were the most violent: Mace, Flail, and Spear. But when I couldn’t find a fourth to complete the arsenal, I suspected I had fallen for a red herring. And I was right! When I saw nutmeg, cloves and pepper, it struck me that the Connections Crew meant the spice Mace, not the crunchy kind.

Rifle 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 due to alliteration, with Tank rounding out the category.

That left purple as today’s rote stuff of Key, Mar, Spear and Style – all pop star names made singular by subtracting the ‘s’ at the end.

Yesterday’s Connections response

Fish: Fluke, Mullet, Sole, Tang
Words in an auction closing sentence: Walking, once, sold, twice
Global Currencies: Pound, Real, Sol, Yuan
Words before “cup”: Butter, Diva, Solo, World

Are you 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 Connections Companion.

As I browsed the web, 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 like a fish, a currency, and I only thought about singing after watching diva.

So I was hitting fish right away with Fluke, Mullet, Sole and Tang. Quickly followed by currencies with Pound (UK), 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 when I looked 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 like a lark.

Lo and behold, the green category was full.

Which left butter (cup), Diva (cup), Solo (cup) and World (cup) to dry up.