NYT Connection Today's Clue and Answer - Saturday, December 14 (#552)

NYT Connection Today's Clue and Answer - Saturday, December 14 (#552)

Looking for today's Connections answer to puzzle No. 552, December 14, the Connections solution to puzzle No. 552 returned to a roller coaster ride compared to yesterday's puzzle, with Connections Companion rating the puzzle a 3 out of 5 for difficulty.

We update our Connections clues and hints daily. And if the hints are not enough for you, see the four answers below, along with the category name and related words.

In addition, for those of you reading this in another time zone, I have included a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #551.

There are spoilers for connection #552. Only those who want to know the answer to today's connection should read on.

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.

Today's connecting words are: Going, Sole, Real, Butter, Fluke, Sold, Diva, Sol, Once, Solo, Tang, Yuan, Pound, Twice, World, Mullet.

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

These hints should at least give you a clue 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.

There is a bigger clue. Before bidding on a cup auction, find out if there are fish in your currency.

Now, the answer to today's game #552 connection is.

Drum roll please.

Welcome to Saturday! Our puzzle rating is back to 3. Please continue with your puzzles this week.

I was looking at the grid and noticed sole, sol, and solo. These three words, to me, had to do with fish, currency, and seeing a diva, I thought they had something to do with singing.

So the fish were soon knocked out with fukase, mullet, flounder, and tang. Currencies followed: pound (UK), real (Brazil), sol (Peru), and yuan (China).

After finding the other two, Solo and Diva gave me an idea what purple was. However, as I looked up the last eight words, the grid had fallen down to read going, one, twice, and sold. I didn't think the auction words were really a group, but I tried to keep it light.

To my surprise, the green categories were filled.

That left Butter (cup), Diva (cup), Solo (cup), and World (cup).

You are reading this late in the day. According to Connections Companion, the difficulty level was 1.5 out of 5.

This week has been a bumpy ride, from a never-before-seen difficulty 1 puzzle, to yesterday's pictorial puzzle, to today's huge reversal to difficulty 1.

Today's 1.5-rank puzzle was surprisingly easier than Wednesday's 1-rank puzzle.

Maybe I drink too much soda, but I saw Crush and Sprite and immediately associated them with soda; Sprite could be grouped with Pixie, but it's obvious once you drink the soda. Starry is less obvious, but used to be called Sierra Mist (Pepsi's version of Sprite).

I saw mail folders in the green categories of Drafts, Sent, Spam, and Trash, but thought they were yellow groups, so I skipped them to grab fantasy creatures named Dragon, Giant, Pixie, and Troll.

I was frustrated so I got the green word to end it.

And it ends with animal homonyms for bore (wild boar), links (lynx), phish (fish), and towed (toad). I skipped looking for the band because of phish before looking at the homonym links.

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