If you want an easy way to come back to our Connections hints every day,bookmark this page.

Below, Ill give you some oblique hints at todays Connections answers.

And farther down the page, Ill reveal the themes and the answers.

NYT Connections board for December 29, 2024: BEACH, DATE, LOCK, CHERRY, FUR, MAROON, TIME, PAIR, STRAND, HEAD, LOCATION, BRICK, DURATION, YOU, RUBY, WISP.

Scroll slowly and take just the hints you need!

Green category - Words seen on your calendar.

Blue category - Quantities of the stuff that comes out of your head.

Purple category - Said aloud, they sound like different types of plants.

BEWARE: Spoilers follow for todays Connections puzzle!

Were about to give away some of the answers.

Scroll slowly if you dont want the whole thing spoiled.

(The full solution is a bit further down.)

A heads up about the tricky parts

There arent any pop culture-related words or categories today.

STRAND refers to a single thingtogether, they might make up a LOCK.

Those words dont go with FUR, though.

CHERRY isnt the only fruit word on the boardthe other one is just spelled incorrectly.

What are the categories in todays Connections?

I give them all away below.

What are the yellow words in todays Connections?

The yellow grouping is considered to be the most straightforward.

What are the green words in todays Connections?

The green grouping is supposed to be the second-easiest.

What are the blue words in todays Connections?

The blue grouping is the second-hardest.

What are the purple words in todays Connections?

The purple grouping is considered to be the hardest.

FUR is fir, BEACH is beech, YOU is yew, and PAIR is pear.

STRAND, HEAD, LOCK, and WISP work for my hair category now.

They fit together, I just cant quite articulate the category.

Oh, APPOINTMENT SPECIFICATIONS.

Yes, that makes sense.

Youll see a game board with 16 tiles, each with one word or phrase.

Your job is to select a group of four tiles that have something in common.

Select four items and hit the Submit button.

If you guessed correctly, the category and color will be revealed.

(Yellow is easiest, followed by green, then blue, then purple.)

If your guess was incorrect, youll get a chance to take another crack.

You win when youve correctly identified all four groups.

But if you make four mistakes before you finish, the game ends and the answers are revealed.

Expect to see overlapping groups.

So dont hit submit until youve confirmed that your group of four containsonlythose four things.

If youre stuck, another strategy is to look at the words that seem to havenoconnection to the others.

Check back tomorrow for the next puzzle!