Looking for clues for today’s Connections answers? The Connections answers on December 8 for puzzle #546 are a little 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 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, #545, in case you’re reading this in a different time zone.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #546. 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: SANDWICH, CATERPILLAR, SHOEHORN, SEOUL, SLUG, WRAP, WEDGE, SOCK, PUMA, BELTA, METTLE, DOVE, INDY, GREYHOUND, BLOW, SQUEEZE.
If you need hints to solve the groupings, then here are the themes of each, based on the order of difficulty:
- 🟨 Yellow: Jabs and hooks
- 🟩 Green: Squish together
- 🟦 Blue: Businesses with names on the wild side
- 🟪 Purple: Earworms
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: Today’s puzzle has a lot of hooks, both the kind you’ll find in the boxing ring and stuck in your head. Wring yourself out and remember some of the biggest players in the concrete jungle.
Today’s Connections answers
So, what are today’s Connections answers for game #546?
Drumroll, please…
- 🟨 Punch: Belt, blow, slug, sock
- 🟩 Cram: Sandwich, shoehorn, squeeze, wedge
- 🟦 Companies named after animals: Caterpillar, dove, greyhound, puma
- 🟪 Homophones of music genres: Indy, mettle, Seoul, wrap
Greyhound stuck out to me immediately, and with no other dog-related words I figured the category had something to do with the line of buses. With that in mind, Puma and Dove stood out as other company names, and once I remembered the CAT on those big yellow construction machines stood for Caterpillar, that rounded out today’s blue category.
Next came the yellow category with a right hook and plenty of punchy words like Belt, Blow, Slug, and Sock.
After that, I was left scratching my head over what Mettle and Seoul had to do with anything, but Sandwich, Squeeze, and Wedge are close enough synonyms that Shoehorn finally stood out to me, especially with Sock out of the occasion, and rounded out the green category.
That left purple as today’s rote fill with Indy, Mettle, Seoul, and Wrap. I never seem to pick up on the homophone clue or ones where words or letters are missing, and today was no different. Womp womp.
Yesterday’s Connections answers
- 🟨 Think of together: Affiliate, associate, equate, relate
- 🟩 Ways to attract fish: Bait, chum, fly, lure
- 🟦 W.N.B.A. teams: Liberty, Storm, Sun, Wings
- 🟪 Long ____: Bow, fellow, horn, legs
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #545, which had a difficulty rating of 3.7 out of 5, according to the Connections Companion.
Strangely, yesterday’s much harder puzzle was a breeze after a few days straight of puzzles rated easier.
However, if you don’t the WNBA and Liberty, Storm, Sun and Wings, this one may be harder. I got that one first for the blue group.
Fly and lure stuck out to me as fishing. Bait and chum were easy finds from there as related to fishing.
I was not seeing the purple category yesterday but luckily I had yellow with affiliate, associate, equate and relate.
Thus, we ended on purple with longbow, Longfellow (I assume they meant the author), Longhorn and longlegs. It did make me think of Foghorn Leghorn, who is not represent here but that’s my brain.
