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Need help with NYT Connections for Sunday, November 30, 2025? This was Connections #903. Below, you’ll find the 16-word board, progressive hints, the four category names, and the complete answers. Stop before the answer sections if you still want to solve the puzzle yourself.
Today’s Connections puzzle
The Sunday, November 30, 2025, edition of Connections was puzzle #903. As usual, the challenge was to divide 16 words into four groups of four, with each group linked by a common connection.
The 16 words
Here is the complete board before the answers are revealed:
- WHISTLEBLEW
- MISS
- COCKATIEL
- SPARROW
- BEAR
- HOOK
- TURKEY
- UNREAD
- SWALLOW
- SILVER
- STAND
- BUST
- LEMON
- LUFFY
- CAMEROON
- STOMACH
Hints for Connections #903
These clues move from relatively broad to more revealing. The category colors follow the usual Connections order, with yellow generally being the most straightforward and purple the most wordplay-heavy.
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- Yellow: Ways to say you can tolerate or endure something.
- Green: Terms for a failure, disappointment, or unsuccessful thing.
- Blue: Characters who are fictional pirates.
- Purple: Words whose endings sound like color names.
Category names
Still working on the puzzle? The four categories are:
- Yellow: TOLERATE
- Green: FLOP
- Blue: FICTIONAL PIRATES
- Purple: ENDING IN COLOR HOMOPHONES
NYT Connections answers for November 30
Spoiler warning: The complete groups and explanations appear below.
Yellow: TOLERATE
BEAR, STAND, STOMACH, SWALLOW
Each of these words can mean to tolerate, endure, or put up with something:
- You can bear an inconvenience.
- You can stand an unpleasant situation.
- You can stomach something objectionable.
- You can swallow a difficulty, insult, or disappointment.
SWALLOW is particularly deceptive because it is also the name of a bird. In this puzzle, however, it belongs with the endurance-related words rather than with the other bird-looking entries.
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Green: FLOP
BUST, LEMON, MISS, TURKEY
These words can all describe a failure or something unsuccessful:
- A bust is a failure.
- A lemon is a defective or disappointing product, especially a vehicle.
- A miss is an unsuccessful attempt.
- A turkey can describe a failed production, performance, or project.
The group brings together several different senses of failure. LEMON is the most object-oriented example, while TURKEY is another bird-related decoy.
Blue: FICTIONAL PIRATES
HOOK, LUFFY, SILVER, SPARROW
These are names associated with fictional pirates:
- Captain Hook from Peter Pan.
- Monkey D. Luffy from the manga and anime series One Piece.
- Long John Silver from Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island.
- Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean.
The category spans children’s literature, classic adventure fiction, manga and anime, and film. LUFFY may be the least familiar entry for solvers who do not follow One Piece, but the intended character is Monkey D. Luffy.
Purple: ENDING IN COLOR HOMOPHONES
CAMEROON, COCKATIEL, UNREAD, WHISTLEBLEW
The final sounds of these words resemble color names:
- Cameroon sounds like maroon.
- Cockatiel ends with a sound like teal.
- Unread ends with a sound like red.
- Whistleblew ends with a sound like blue.
This is the puzzle’s most language-based group. It is not about the meanings of the words; it depends on hearing a color in the ending. WHISTLEBLEW is especially unusual and is best understood as the past-tense expression “whistle blew,” written together on the board. Its final sound supplies “blue.”
The biggest trap: the apparent bird group
Four entries initially look as though they could form a bird category: COCKATIEL, SPARROW, TURKEY, and SWALLOW. That is deliberate misdirection.
Those words ultimately split across all four groups:
- COCKATIEL belongs to the color-homophone group because its ending sounds like “teal.”
- SPARROW belongs with the fictional pirates as Jack Sparrow.
- TURKEY belongs in the FLOP group.
- SWALLOW belongs in TOLERATE, as in “swallow an insult” or “swallow a disappointment.”
There is another layer of overlap in the board: STAND, STOMACH, and SWALLOW can all express endurance, while BUST, LEMON, MISS, and TURKEY all point toward failure. Testing the strongest meaning-based groups first helps separate those relationships from the surface-level bird connection.
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How difficult was this puzzle?
This is an editorial solving assessment, not an independently measured NYT difficulty score. The puzzle is likely to feel moderately challenging because it combines familiar expressions with several misleading alternate meanings.
The yellow group is relatively accessible once the endurance meaning is recognized. The green group also becomes clear after identifying BUST and MISS, although LEMON and TURKEY use more specific senses of “failure.” The blue group depends partly on familiarity with fictional characters, particularly Luffy. The purple group is the most difficult because the connections rely on sound rather than definition, and WHISTLEBLEW is an unusual entry.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Want more Connections-style puzzles offline?
If you enjoyed this puzzle and want additional category-matching practice away from a screen, the official Connections puzzle book from The New York Times Games is a natural follow-up. The publisher describes it as a physical edition of the category-matching game, with a lay-flat format intended for solving and sharing.
It should be treated as an additional collection of Connections-style puzzles—not as a guaranteed archive of the November 30, 2025 daily puzzle. Check the retailer’s current edition, price, and availability before buying.
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The date, puzzle number, word board, hints, categories, and solutions above were cross-checked against independently published guides from Forbes, TechRadar, Parade, and a Yahoo-syndicated version. Those guides agree on the material answer key. The game itself is a daily category-matching puzzle in which players divide 16 words into four groups of four.
The exact official New York Times puzzle page was not directly accessible during research, so the article does not present the guide wording as official NYT editorial copy.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the answer to NYT Connections on Sunday, November 30, 2025?
The four groups are TOLERATE: BEAR, STAND, STOMACH, SWALLOW; FLOP: BUST, LEMON, MISS, TURKEY; FICTIONAL PIRATES: HOOK, LUFFY, SILVER, SPARROW; and ENDING IN COLOR HOMOPHONES: CAMEROON, COCKATIEL, UNREAD, WHISTLEBLEW.
What number was the November 30, 2025 Connections puzzle?
It was Connections puzzle #903.
Why do COCKATIEL, SPARROW, TURKEY, and SWALLOW not make a bird group?
They are a decoy. COCKATIEL belongs to the color-homophone group, SPARROW is Jack Sparrow, TURKEY describes a flop, and SWALLOW can mean to tolerate or endure something.
The Bottom Line
Connections #903 answers: BEAR, STAND, STOMACH, SWALLOW for TOLERATE; BUST, LEMON, MISS, TURKEY for FLOP; HOOK, LUFFY, SILVER, SPARROW for FICTIONAL PIRATES; and CAMEROON, COCKATIEL, UNREAD, WHISTLEBLEW for ENDING IN COLOR HOMOPHONES.
Quick Recap
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