Looking for today's Connections answer for puzzle #561 on December 23, a little easier than yesterday's puzzle, the Connections Companion difficulty level is 3 out of 5.

We update our Connections clues and hints daily. And if the hints aren't enough, see the four answers below, along with the category name and related words.

In addition, for those of you reading this in a different time zone, I've included a reflection on yesterday's puzzle 560.

There are spoilers for Connection 561. Only those who want to know the answer to today's Connections 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: Boat, U, Bowl, M, Thou, Crew, V, You, 8, Ewe, Scoop, Glue, Tuesday, K, Grand, Yew

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

If you read these hints, you should at least be able to find the answer to today's connection. If not, please continue reading for larger hints. Also, if you only want to know the answer, scroll down further.

There is an even bigger clue. Explore the super-time stream by tracing your memories of grammar school classes, high school fashion fads, Masset headlines, etc.

Now, what's the answer to today's game #561 Connection?

Drum roll, please.

Today's clue was a mishmash of numbers and letters, from which it was easy to find the homophones Ewe, U, Yew, and You. But that meant the pressure was on to find the more difficult categories.

Fortunately, after some shuffling, Glue and Bowl came close.

I then shuffled a few times trying to connect all the single letters, but got stuck; after brainstorming other uses for V, Boat, Crew, and Scoop stood out.

That left blue as today's memorization fill with Grand, K, M, and Thou.

Are you reading this in a slower time zone? According to Connections Companion, the difficulty level was 3.5 out of 5.

Since there were so many TV show names to start with, we thought it best to start there, and “Monk,” “Bones,” “Elementary,” and “Kojak” rounded out the blue category.

Next up was purple, with Abbott, Fry, Key, and Laurel.

Yellow was surprisingly difficult to solve today; seeing Nun and Dome together made me think about religious constructions, but once I saw other slang like Coconut, Crown, and Skull, it all made sense.

As a result, I was left with nothing but green for today's memorization fill-in-the-blanks with words spelled the same in both forward and reverse directions, such as Ava, Kayak, Nun, and Stutz.