Looking for today's Connections answer for puzzle #558 from December 20, Connections is much easier than yesterday's puzzle. The Connections companion rated this puzzle 1.5 out of 5 for difficulty.

We update our Connections hints and tips 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 another time zone, I have included a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #557.

There are spoilers for Connection 558. 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 connection words are: Whale, Cocktail, Finance, Question, Statement, Solution, Grown, Wine, Tech, Command, Compound, Crypto, Mown, Pharma, Exclamation, and Mixture.

If you need a hint to help you solve the groupings, here are each of the topics 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 just want the answer, scroll down further.

Here's a bigger hint: Make a sentence of a phrase while avoiding broth.

Now, what's the answer to today's game #558 Connection?

Drum roll, please.

We had a 3 rating this week, but on Friday we had a 1.5 rating. How easy was that? So here you go.

I looked at cocktails and mixes and started with formulations. The pharma company had the pharmacological thought that led me to compounds and solutions.

A shift in the grid such that exclamations, commands, and statements are on the diagonal. Picking up on the question that concludes the green quartet.

My attempt to go down the line here was ruined. I had legitimately thought it was the purple group that was the worst offender. So I grabbed the people I thought were the remaining four and ended up in purple early. We had the homophones grown (groan), mown (moan), whale (whine), and wine (whine).

Thus we ended up with the broth of crypto, finance, pharma, and technology. I thought pharmaceutical companies were new to me until I remembered a man named Martin Shkreli.

Are you reading this late in the day? According to Connections Companion, the difficulty level was 3.3 out of 5.

Three more to get you through the week.

For starters, when I saw the “junk,” my first thought was a Chinese flat-bottomed sailing “boat.” Both the tugboat and the submarine jumped out of there, then I had to look for the barge. Fortunately, the last three boats were right next to each other.

I looked at the yellow categories and removed most of them so as not to disturb them. This included DELAY, POST POST, SHELVE, and TABLE.

My first thought was something about barrels and barrels, but that didn't work, and then I saw barrels and gorillas, which reminded me of Donkey Kong. From there I arrived at the hammer and ladder.

That left the bar fixtures: counter, keg, stools, and faucet.