'Connections' December 20: Hints and Answers for Puzzle #558

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Maintaining a Connections win streak is quite a trying task, so if you are in need of a helping hand, then Newsweek has your back.

The popular brainteaser was launched by The New York Times in June 2023 and has gone on to become the newspaper's second-most played game behind Wordle, another word-based puzzle.

Connections challenges players to uncover threads connecting a series of words. Instructions on how to play the game are below. Clues and the answers for Friday's puzzle are toward the end of the article.

How to Play Connections

Connections tasks players with grouping 16 words into four categories based on association. For example, Thursday's game linked the words "Delay," "Postpone," "Shelve," and "Table" under the category "Defer."

Each of the four categories is labeled with a color, which also signifies their difficulty level. Yellow is the easiest category, followed by green, blue and purple. The puzzles are rarely straightforward, using homophones and wordplay, among other techniques, to keep players challenged.

The familiarity of the words used and how often they pop up in modern life are also difficulty factors, although less-common words aren't only used in the harder categories. "Item overlap," where one word can be linked to multiple categories, is another way Connections tests players.

If stuck, players can hit the shuffle button, which will mix up where the words appear on the screen.

Wyna Liu, a crossword editor at The New York Times who was asked to develop Connections, told Newsweek about her recommended tips for playing the game.

"My best piece of advice is to wait as long as you can before guessing," Liu said.

"You may see the board and have completely identified the category, seeing five words that could belong in that category," she continued. "Don't try to guess the four words in that category because, even though you know what the fifth member is, you won't know which of the four it might not be," which would ultimately waste a turn.

"Don't do what I do, which is 'rage solve,'" Liu said.

The answers for Friday's Connections puzzle will be revealed at the end of this article, so scroll with caution if you want to work them out yourself.