Looking for the answer to today's Connections companion puzzle #542 for December 4, which is the same as yesterday's puzzle. The difficulty level for this puzzle on Connections Companion is 3.8 out of 5.

We update our Connections clues and hints daily. And if the hints aren't enough, all four solutions are listed below, along with the category title and related words. In addition, for those of you reading this in a different time zone, I have included a reflection on yesterday's puzzle 542.

There are spoilers for Connection #542. Please read only if you want to know the answer to today's Connections.

Or see our NYT Connections How to Play Guide for tips on how to solve the puzzle without our help.

While today's wordle solution guide recommends the best wordle starting words as a strategy, the Connections solution depends on identifying the categories that are connected from the 16 words. The difficulty of each category is represented by a color, with yellow being the easiest grouping and purple the most difficult. Hints are helpful as the answer is displayed after four wrong guesses.

If you need a hint to solve the groupings, here are each theme in order of difficulty:

These hints should at least give you an idea of how to find the answer to today's connection. If not, please continue reading for larger hints. Also, if you just want the answer, scroll down further.

Here's an even bigger hint: stay on the road to Greece and avoid the needle and the toilet.

Now for the answer to today's game #542 connection.

Drum roll please.

Today, steer to the shepherd who guides and directs the yellow category.

Then I knew that Pan, Atlas, and Helen were part of Greek mythology. I wasn't 100% sure about Echo, though, because I couldn't recall her story. There are different versions, but I think her sin was that she offended Hera.

For a while I was stuck in green and purple. I had loofahs, toiletries, and candles as themes for the bathroom, but I couldn't connect with the idea of synonyms. I tried turntables and sewing kits, but kept getting the message that there was only one. Frankly, I put Johnson in here because, “Isn't that interesting?” It was out of a touch of frustration that I had to do this. And it was.

And that left the green category, the one with the needle. Compasses, sewing sets, turntables, pine trees. Sure enough, I figured it out. To lean singular or not to lean singular. That's it.

I'm reading this late in the day. According to Connections Companion, the difficulty was 3.8 out of 5.

It was difficult today and for me it was mainly due to the yellow category.

It was easy for me to see Cookie, the Count, Oscar, and Snuffy as Sesame Street characters, as my 5 year old watches them almost every day, and I was in the blue group.

Grammy and Mummy stick in my head as family names, which leads to pop, and later cuz it always reminds me of Paul Walker's awful line reading in 2Fast 2Furious (the worst movie in that franchise).

I'm stuck here. I was aware that one of the last two groups was The Sopranos, but I had never actually seen the show. It's one of those cultural touchstones that I just can't bring myself to watch at this point.

What saved me were a few context clues. I knew that Edie Falco was in the show, so I assumed that the puzzle was looking for the name of the character. Also, there was clearly one EGOT name in each category, so Emmy was paired with Edie.

On the other hand, I knew that Tony would be paired with Junior and Carmela. How did we know the other names? I think it's a pervasive pop culture thing.

That left Meadow, CeeCee, and Katie. Here I speculated. Katie was not a Sopranos name, I thought. At this point, I did not see any names that looked like letters.

Using this process, I took a strike to guess se in the Sopranos grouping. Strike 1, but this left me with a meadow to fix.

Thus, I survived a puzzle for which I did not have enough information about one of the easiest categories to say that it was the easiest.