Cracking Today’s NYT Connections Puzzle: A Surprisingly Tough Brain Teaser
If you sat down today expecting a casual round of NYT Connections, chances are you were quickly proven wrong. The December 13 puzzle, numbered 916, turned out to be one of those rare days when every single group felt challenging, not just one or two. It’s the kind of puzzle that makes you lean back, squint at the screen, and mutter, “Okay… this is tougher than usual.”
For anyone unfamiliar, Connections is now one of the most popular New York Times games outside of the classic crossword. The idea is simple on paper: you’re given 16 words, and your task is to sort them into four groups of four, based on a shared connection. The catch is that the links aren’t always obvious. Some are straightforward categories, while others involve wordplay, pronunciation, or missing letters. There’s only one correct solution, and you’re limited to four mistakes before the game ends.
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Today’s puzzle didn’t ease players in gently. Even the so-called “easier” yellow group raised eyebrows. It turned out to be a collection of wide-legged pants styles, including culotte, gaucho, harem, and palazzo. For fashion-savvy players, this may have clicked eventually, but for many others, these words didn’t naturally scream “pants,” making this group surprisingly tricky.
The green group required a different kind of thinking altogether. These words shared a silent “T,” meaning the letter appears in spelling but disappears in pronunciation. Words like apostle, depot, mortgage, and Poirot fit this category. It’s the kind of connection that’s easy to miss if you’re focused on meaning rather than sound, and that’s exactly what made it clever.
Then came the blue group, which leaned heavily into sports knowledge. These words pointed to legendary New York Mets players: Gooden, Piazza, Seaver, and Strawberry. If baseball history isn’t your strong suit, this group likely felt like a wall you couldn’t climb.
Finally, the purple group played with mythology and spelling. These were Greek mythological figures with a letter removed: Aja, Are, Her, and Hercule, referencing Ajax, Ares, Hera, and Hercules. Once the pattern was spotted, it felt satisfying, but getting there wasn’t easy.
Overall, this was widely seen as a tough Connections day. It mixed fashion, phonetics, sports history, and mythology into one puzzle, testing knowledge across multiple domains. Whether it broke your streak or gave you a rare win, it definitely left an impression. So, how did you do today?
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