Today's Connections Hints & Answers For December 12, 2024 (Puzzle #550)

There are a fair number of reasons why you might find yourself stuck on today’s Connections puzzle, many of which boil down to the fact that images are extremely open to interpretation. It is not immediately obvious what each image is supposed to represent, and knowing how to break them down and understand how they are all connected can be a big challenge. Luckily, we have done the hard work for you, and we can help you solve today’s round of Pictionary without losing.

If you like these picture-based puzzles, then you might want to check out the NYT’s Tiles puzzle, as it is a new picture puzzle every day. There are new images every day, which also means there are new layers to each tile making up the images each day. You then get to start matching each layer to one on another tile in an effort to keep the streak going and get a nice high score.

Today’s Connections Category Hints

DECEMBER 12 #550

On 12/12, the editors chose to give a bit of a harder puzzle for the 550th game. Additionally, the same rules to each category still apply, meaning that the harder the category difficulty, the more you have to piece together why those images are connected to each other. This is hard, and it will be difficult for many trying to complete this puzzle.

Due to the
Pictionary
-like nature of today’s puzzle, beyond the normal clues, I have an
image before the category names that tells you what every image is “supposed” to be
, according to the final solution. This will at least help you know what you are looking at rather than having to guess what every picture is.

One category has to do with the sound of each word
One category has to do with something that each of these things has on their edges
One category has to do with four words that can all be used in place of other worse words
One category has to do with four things that are all found in the same geographical feature

What Each Image Is Supposed To Be

All images with correct names in Connections 12/12

As you can see, some of the images do not correlate one-to-one with what you would expect them to be. Some of them do, and yet they are still not what you might expect.

A character jumping on a Connections board.

10 Best Connections Tips, Tricks, & Strategies

Four categories with four words each sounds simple, but the daily challenge of the Connections game can prove difficult without a few tips to help.

To get a further breakdown of each category, the names of the categories will be in the box below. Further down, when I give the spoilers, the words in the boxes will match the ones I used in the image above.

	THINGS THAT SOUND LIKE “T”
	OBJECTS WITH TEETH
	MILD OATHS
	PARTS OF A RIVER

Today’s Connections Answers

DECEMBER 12 #550

Gears in Connections Answers December 12

Yellow Answers: Revealed & Explained

THINGS THAT SOUND LIKE “T”
TEA	TEE (GOLF)	TEE (SHIRT)	TI (MUSICAL NOTE)

This one might be more difficult, depending on your familiarity with the musical notes. Even then, as someone who played an instrument for over a decade, I did not immediately connect that picture to TI as that is not the designation we used, and I was thinking of what the actual notes were. Mary Poppins was not here to help me, and connecting all of these images to the right word and their sound is difficult, even if you do manage to connect the notes.

Green Answers: Revealed & Explained

OBJECTS WITH TEETH
COMB	GEAR	SAW	ZIPPER

This one was particularly frustrating to me, as there are many things with teeth in this puzzle. Most notably the MOUTH, which shows a full row of teeth. I think the best way to put this one on paper would have been to show a mouth that wasn’t smiling because then it wouldn’t have looked as obvious, but that is what it is. Additionally, RATS also have teeth, even if they aren’t directly shown. Figuring out which things with teeth shouldn’t go here is only obvious if you know that the category is “objects” specifically.

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The Password Game can be frustrating as it uses complex mechanics that can be difficult to figure out, even with help.

Blue Answers: Revealed & Explained

MILD OATHS
FUDGE	GEEZ	NUTS	RATS

Seeing what the answer here was actually made me a little sad. Four of them make sense, but putting together that multiple G’s in different fonts was meant to be pronounced out loud in that way was just disheartening. Granted, I already had gotten stuck on the teeth, so this wasn’t even something I made it around to. Even if I said it out loud, as I did when writing this, I would have connected the image to different fonts or typefaces rather than the word itself. It is just like me to make things more complicated than they are.

Purple Answers: Revealed & Explained

PARTS OF A RIVER
BANK	BED	DELTA	MOUTH

I was too busy trying to put teeth in the MOUTH to even consider where else it might go, but this one would be quite difficult to connect. This is because there are a lot of different options for what these words and images could be linked to, but putting them all into a geographical feature is a different kind of challenge. The whole puzzle was hard, but they do like to make extra hard puzzles when it is a special day.

Other Games Like Connections

Try something a little less difficult to wind down your puzzling time today, such as Worldle.

Game Name	How To Play	Is It Free To Play?
Wordle (NYT)	Solve a random five-letter word by using color clues. Every Wordle answer can be found in our daily updated list.	Yes
Hello Wordl	Very similar to Wordle, where players change the number of letters in the word.	Yes
The Password Game	Create a password in this ever-changing, not-so-simple game. You can find some helpful tips in our Password Game guide.	Yes
Worldle	Name a country based only on its silhouette, and a few geographical hints.	Yes