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 November 20, 2024: PLAY, BAY, STIR, CHAIN, TREE, STREAM, BARK, RUN, HOWL, GARNISH, AIR, PYRAMID, MUDDLE, LADDER, SNARL, STRAIN.

Scroll slowly and take just the hints you need!

Green category - Action words for YouTube, maybe.

Blue category - Shaken and on the rocks, kindly.

Purple category - When you get promoted, you move up these symbolic things.

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

TREE and BARK do not go together.

(BARK is a verb.)

BAY and STREAM could both describe bodies of water, but they do not go together today.

RUN is a verb, but it is not a synonym for jog.

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.

RUN seems like a bit of an outlier there.

Oh, isnt BAY a sound dogs make, too?

Im going to try that first category now.

PLAY, STREAM, AIR, and RUN.

I see a cocktail verbs category now, with STIR, GARNISH, MUDDLE, and STRAIN.

That leaves TREE, LADDER, CHAIN, and PYRAMID.

Hmm, are those all infographics?

As in, a family TREE and a food PYRAMID?

Yeah, close enough!

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 loop back and try.

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!