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Random freezes, missing sound and display glitches usually trace back to one bad driver. Find and replace yours safely.Free scan · under a minuteNYT Connections #562 was published on Tuesday, December 24, 2024. The grid’s easiest-looking group is the famous Wizard of Oz line “Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!” The remaining categories depend on close-friend synonyms, homophones for plural letter names, and words that become song titles when repeated three times.
NYT Connections #562 was published on Tuesday, December 24, 2024. The grid’s easiest-looking group is the famous Wizard of Oz line “Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!” The remaining categories depend on close-friend synonyms, homophones for plural letter names, and words that become song titles when repeated three times.
The NYT Connections #562 grid
Try to sort these 16 words into four groups of four before looking at the hints or solution:
| Words | Words | Words | Words |
|---|---|---|---|
| LIONS | TIGERS | BEARS | OH MY |
| DEAR | JAYS | BILLS | USE |
| BYE | BEES | PLEASE | CLOSE |
| TIGHT | GIMME | EASE | INTIMATE |
Hints for Connections #562
These clues become progressively more specific, but they do not give away the category names immediately.
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Yellow group hint
Think of a famous line associated with Dorothy, the Scarecrow and the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz.
Green group hint
These words can describe someone who is especially valued or close to you as a friend.
Blue group hint
Say the words aloud. Each one sounds like the name of a plural letter.
Purple group hint
Repeat each word three times. The result should resemble a recognizable song title.
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Spoiler warning: the Connections #562 answers
The complete solution is below. Stop here if you still want to solve the grid without seeing the categories.
NYT Connections #562 categories and answers
Yellow: “Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!”
LIONS · TIGERS · BEARS · OH MY
These four entries reproduce the familiar exclamation from the forest sequence in The Wizard of Oz. The group is unusually direct: instead of finding four words with an indirect connection, you can read the entries almost as the quotation itself.
Green: Beloved, as a friend
CLOSE · DEAR · INTIMATE · TIGHT
All four words can describe a strong personal relationship. “Close,” “dear” and “intimate” are familiar descriptions of a cherished friendship, while “tight” works in the informal sense of being close friends.
Blue: Words that sound like plural letters
BEES · EASE · JAYS · USE
Read aloud, the words become letter names:
- BEES sounds like B’s.
- EASE sounds like E’s.
- JAYS sounds like J’s.
- USE sounds like U’s.
This is a sound-based category rather than a meaning-based one, so saying the words aloud is the key step.
Purple: When tripled, hit song titles
BILLS · BYE · GIMME · PLEASE
Repeat each entry three times and it becomes the repeated wording of a recognizable song title:
- BILLS becomes “Bills Bills Bills.”
- BYE becomes “Bye Bye Bye.”
- GIMME becomes “Gimme Gimme Gimme.”
- PLEASE becomes “Please Please Please.”
The connection is the repeated wording in the titles—not a shared artist, musical era or genre. That distinction matters because the category is built around the transformation created by tripling each word.
Complete Connections #562 answer grid
| Category | Answers | Why they fit |
|---|---|---|
| “Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!” | LIONS, TIGERS, BEARS, OH MY | The familiar Wizard of Oz line. |
| Beloved, as a friend | CLOSE, DEAR, INTIMATE, TIGHT | Terms for a close or cherished friendship. |
| Words that sound like plural letters | BEES, EASE, JAYS, USE | Homophones of B’s, E’s, J’s and U’s. |
| When tripled, hit song titles | BILLS, BYE, GIMME, PLEASE | Each word is repeated three times to form a song title. |
Why this grid can be misleading
The yellow group is so conspicuous that it may initially look like a joke or a decoy. Once you see LIONS, TIGERS and BEARS, OH MY completes the quotation almost verbatim—but Connections often encourages solvers to question an obvious set until they have tested the other words.
There are also several plausible distractions:
- LIONS, BEARS and TIGERS can suggest animals or sports teams, but those associations do not account for OH MY.
- BILLS may suggest the Buffalo Bills, but that sports connection is not the intended category.
- PLEASE, BYE and GIMME look like ordinary conversational words until the repeated-song-title pattern appears.
- TIGHT may seem less natural than the other friendship terms, but “tight” is an established informal way to describe close friends.
A productive solving order is to confirm the quotation first, then look for the four relationship terms. After that, pronounce the remaining candidates and test whether the last four words become familiar titles when tripled.
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A physical option for Connections fans
If you like the daily word games but want something away from a screen, Puzzle Mania! is a physical NYT Games puzzle book featuring Wordle, Connections, Spelling Bee, Minis and other puzzle formats. It is a related collection for fans of the games, not a claim that it reproduces Connections puzzle #562.
Frequently Asked Questions
What were the Connections #562 categories?
The four categories are “Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!”, “Beloved, as a friend,” “Words that sound like plural letters” and “When tripled, hit song titles.”
What is the blue group in Connections #562?
The blue group is BEES, EASE, JAYS and USE. They sound like B’s, E’s, J’s and U’s when spoken aloud.
When was NYT Connections #562 published?
Connections #562 was the Tuesday, December 24, 2024 puzzle. The puzzle number is the reliable identifier when distinguishing it from later holiday puzzles.
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The Bottom Line
Connections #562 groups LIONS, TIGERS, BEARS, OH MY as the Wizard of Oz quotation; CLOSE, DEAR, INTIMATE, TIGHT as terms for a beloved friend; BEES, EASE, JAYS, USE as homophones of plural letter names; and BILLS, BYE, GIMME, PLEASE as words that become song titles when tripled.
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