Players tackling today’s New York Times Connections puzzle encountered a moderately difficult grid, with several misleading word groupings and a particularly tricky purple category. Puzzle #922, released on December 19, challenged solvers to sort sixteen seemingly unrelated words into four hidden categories—a format that has become a morning ritual for millions.
Connections, an increasingly popular word puzzle from The New York Times, asks players to identify thematic relationships between groups of four words. Unlike Wordle, where the answer is singular, Connections requires identifying nuanced associations, testing both vocabulary and lateral thinking.
A tougher-than-usual puzzle
Players discussed online that today’s grid required patience and strategic elimination. The purple category drew the most confusion, with several words that resembled entirely different themes. The New York Times Games platform now includes a Connections Bot that analyzes player scores and provides performance insights, a feature previously limited to Wordle.
Registered players can track streaks, completion rates, and perfect scores, turning a casual puzzle into a competitive game of pattern recognition and vocabulary skill.
For players seeking tactical support, experts emphasize that avoiding early confident clicks and identifying shared linguistic features helps prevent elimination mistakes.
Hints for December 19 Connections #922
Solvers received four graded hints, moving from easiest to hardest:
Yellow: Conclusions
Green: Let’s eat
Blue: Government divisions
Purple: Where to put a boat
These hint categories helped many narrow down possibilities before committing answers in the grid.
Solutions for today’s groups
The completed puzzle features four thematic sets, each grouping four related words. Today’s official themes and answers were:
Yellow – Findings: data, details, information, intelligence
Green – Dinner options: cook, delivery, go out, leftovers
Blue – US cabinet departments: Commerce, Education, Energy, Labor
Purple – Homophones of ship-parking places: birth (berth), doc (dock), peer (pier), Worf (wharf)
The purple group was especially challenging due to its wordplay and reliance on phonetic similarity rather than direct meaning. Many solvers reported nearly failing the puzzle before spotting the nautical wordplay pattern.
Strategy trends continue among solvers
As Connections rises in popularity, players are discovering recurring puzzle themes, including:
food-related groupings
government terms
business words
homophones and puns
phrases with hidden double meanings
These patterns allow veteran players to identify early pathways to elimination.
For those new to the puzzle, experts recommend grouping obviously unrelated words first to avoid errors, and reading groups aloud to catch phonetic parallels that visual recognition can miss.
NYT Games continues to expand its lineup of interactive word challenges, and Connections now ranks alongside Strands, Mini Crossword, and Wordle among the most widely-played daily puzzle offerings.
