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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 26, 2024: TIDY, ALA, HANDSOME, ELDER, SPRUCE, LIKE, PINE, MISS, HEALTHY, ROUGHLY, ARK, PALM, ABOUT, RESPECTABLE, ORE, AROUND.

Scroll slowly and take just the hints you need!

Green category - They grow tall, hopefully.

Blue category - A good quantity of something.

Purple category - They might be preceded by a city name.

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

SPRUCE is not a synonym for TIDY.

No pop culture knowledge needed today.

ARK does not refer to the thing Noah built.

Its short for something else.

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.

ELDER could fit, too.

TIDY, HEALTHY, RESPECTABLE, and HANDSOME could all fit as desirable qualities in a partner, perhaps.

Oh, it refers to a lot of somethingas in, a HANDSOME feast.

I suppose that works, too!

LIKE, ROUGHLY, ABOUT, and AROUND are all words referring to approximations of things.

Theyre specifically the abbreviations for states in the AP style guide.

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!