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1Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors2Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches3Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsNYT Connections #925 was released on Monday, December 22, 2025. If you meant December 22, 2024, that was a different puzzle: #560, not #925. This page covers the archived December 22, 2025 game, with hints first and the complete answer below.
Spoiler warning: The 16-word board and gentle clues come before the solution. Stop before the Answers section if you still want to solve #925 yourself.
The 16 words in Connections #925
Before looking at the hints, confirm that you have the correct puzzle. The December 22, 2025 board contained these 16 entries:
The puzzle asks you to divide all 16 words into four groups of four. Some entries are deliberately written to fit more than one apparent idea, so a plausible-looking group is not necessarily the intended one.
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Hints for December 22, 2025, Connections #925
Use these in order. The first clue for each color is broad; the later clues make the connection more apparent.
| Group | Gentle hint | Stronger nudge |
|---|---|---|
| Yellow | Think of a sudden flood, burst, or increase. | One of the words can follow the phrase a ___ of robberies. |
| Green | These words point toward a later time. | They describe what is coming afterward or what has not happened yet. |
| Blue | Put the same word after each entry. | The shared word is card; one example is business card. |
| Purple | The entries are incomplete color names. | Add one final letter to each word to reveal the colors. |
One-step clues
- Yellow: A large number of similar things can arrive in a sudden burst.
- Green: Think of the future, the next thing, or something that occurs after something else.
- Blue: Business, greeting, membership, and playing can all be followed by card.
- Purple: BROW, CYA, PIN, and WHIT each need one last letter.
For the full solution, continue below.
Answers for December 22, 2025, Connections #925
The answer set below is the solution reported consistently by several independent puzzle outlets, including TechRadar, Insider Gaming, Parade, Yahoo, and Forbes.
| Color | Category | Words |
|---|---|---|
| 🟨 Yellow | INFLUX | RASH, RUSH, SURGE, WAVE |
| đźź© Green | SUBSEQUENT | COMING, FOLLOWING, FUTURE, LATER |
| 🟦 Blue | KINDS OF CARDS | BUSINESS, GREETING, MEMBERSHIP, PLAYING |
| 🟪 Purple | COLORS MINUS THEIR LAST LETTER | BROW, CYA, PIN, WHIT |
Why each group works
🟨 Yellow: RASH, RUSH, SURGE, WAVE — influx
RUSH, SURGE, and WAVE can all describe a sudden or substantial increase, arrival, or outpouring. A rush of customers, a surge in demand, or a wave of new arrivals all fit the idea of an influx.
RASH is the deliberately less familiar entry. It is not being used to mean a skin irritation, and it is not the adjective meaning reckless. In the noun expression a rash of something, it means a large number of similar events occurring within a short period. For example, a rash of robberies means many robberies happening in a relatively brief span. Cambridge Dictionary gives this noun usage with examples such as a rash of robberies and a rash of complaints.
That unusual noun sense is the key to the yellow group. Without it, COMING can look like the natural fourth member beside RUSH, SURGE, and WAVE.
🟩 Green: COMING, FOLLOWING, FUTURE, LATER — subsequent
These four words refer to what is ahead in time or what happens afterward:
- COMING events are approaching.
- The FOLLOWING day or chapter comes next.
- The FUTURE concerns time that has not happened yet.
- LATER means at a subsequent time.
COMING is the important bridge word. It can suggest an approaching arrival, which makes it tempting to place in the influx group. But in this puzzle it belongs with the clearly temporal words FOLLOWING, FUTURE, and LATER.
🟦 Blue: BUSINESS, GREETING, MEMBERSHIP, PLAYING — kinds of cards
Add CARD after every word:
- BUSINESS CARD
- GREETING CARD
- MEMBERSHIP CARD
- PLAYING CARD
This is the most concrete group on the board. It is not simply a category of things that might be kept in a wallet. A business card and membership card may be wallet items, but greeting cards and playing cards point to the broader and more precise connection: types of cards.
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🟪 Purple: BROW, CYA, PIN, WHIT — colors with the final letter removed
Restore one final letter to each entry:
| Board entry | Added letter | Color |
|---|---|---|
| BROW | + N | BROWN |
| CYA | + N | CYAN |
| PIN | + K | PINK |
| WHIT | + E | WHITE |
The category is not simply colors. The trick is that each board entry is a color name missing its last letter. CYA may initially read as the abbreviation or farewell see ya, while PIN may suggest a fastener or a personal identification number. Their spellings become useful only when tested against the same missing-letter pattern.
Why the yellow and green groups were easy to confuse
The main ambiguity in #925 came from the difference between something that is arriving and something that describes an increase. A coming event or coming crowd is approaching, but COMING does not itself mean an influx. It belongs with words about sequence and time: FOLLOWING, FUTURE, and LATER.
By contrast, RASH is the decisive yellow word once its noun meaning is recognized. The complete yellow set is about a sudden or unusually large arrival or increase: RASH, RUSH, SURGE, and WAVE.
TechRadar reported making this exact kind of mistake, placing COMING with the influx words instead of RASH. That makes the yellow/green split the puzzle’s central trap rather than an arbitrary distinction.
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- CYA, LATER, and WAVE can all suggest ways of saying goodbye, but there is no valid fourth word to complete that group.
- BUSINESS, MEMBERSHIP, and FOLLOWING can evoke customers, subscribers, or an audience. The connection is tempting, but FOLLOWING belongs in the temporal group, while BUSINESS and MEMBERSHIP belong with CARD.
- MEMBERSHIP and FOLLOWING can both describe a group of supporters or an audience, but that broad association is weaker than the exact phrase and time-based connections.
These are plausible traps, not alternate solutions. The game’s intended answer uses all 16 words exactly once.
A reliable solving path for #925
- Start with fixed phrases. BUSINESS, GREETING, MEMBERSHIP, and PLAYING all form familiar compounds with CARD. This is the safest group and removes four distracting entries.
- Inspect the unusual short entries. CYA stands out as an abbreviation, while BROW, PIN, and WHIT look like ordinary words that may be incomplete.
- Test a spelling operation. Adding one final letter produces BROWN, CYAN, PINK, and WHITE, revealing the purple group.
- Separate time from arrival. FUTURE and LATER strongly indicate the temporal group. Add FOLLOWING and COMING rather than treating COMING as an increase.
- Read RASH as a noun. The four remaining words form the influx group, with RASH meaning a sudden large number of similar events in the phrase a rash of….
- Submit only when the full set is defensible. A nearly correct-looking group is risky because the game allows only four mistakes.
How NYT Connections works
According to the NYT Help Center, Connections presents 16 words that must be sorted into four groups of four. Each puzzle has one intended solution, and the words are chosen so that some may appear to fit more than one category. The color labels indicate the general difficulty of the groups: yellow is intended to be easiest and purple the trickiest, although individual solvers may discover them in a different order.
- A new puzzle releases at midnight in the player’s time zone.
- You can play through the NYT Games website, the NYT Games app, and other supported NYT platforms.
- You may make up to four mistakes before losing the puzzle.
- The board can be shuffled to make patterns easier to see.
- After solving, the result screen shows statistics and provides a shareable result.
Can you replay Connections #925?
Because #925 is from December 22, 2025, it is an archived puzzle rather than the current daily game. The NYT Help Center’s current archive information says that full archive access requires an All Access or Games subscription. Archive play can affect statistics, but it does not count toward a daily streak. Access and available features can depend on the account, subscription, and platform.
The date distinction matters: an archive page for December 22, 2024 identifies that day as puzzle #560. Searching for “December 22 Connections” without the year can therefore lead to the wrong answer set.
How difficult was #925?
Solvers were divided. TechRadar rated the puzzle Hard and described a mistake involving RASH and COMING. A Yahoo writer characterized the solve as fairly easy and reported completing it without a mistake. Discussion among players on Reddit was also mixed: some found the color transformation accessible, while others found the yellow/green distinction less obvious.
So it is more accurate to say that the puzzle’s difficulty depended on the solver. The purple pattern was immediately visible to some players, but the unfamiliar noun sense of RASH and the flexible meaning of COMING made the semantic groups more troublesome for others.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which December 22 puzzle is NYT Connections #925?
Connections #925 was the puzzle released on Monday, December 22, 2025. December 22, 2024 was puzzle #560, so the year is essential when checking the answers.
What does RASH mean in the yellow group?
RASH uses the noun expression a rash of…, meaning a large number of similar events occurring within a short time, as in a rash of robberies. It does not refer to a skin condition in this puzzle.
Can I replay Connections #925?
#925 is an archived puzzle. The NYT Help Center says full archive access requires an All Access or Games subscription; archived play may affect statistics but does not count toward a daily streak.
The Bottom Line
Bottom line: NYT Connections #925, released December 22, 2025, groups RASH, RUSH, SURGE, and WAVE as an INFLUX; COMING, FOLLOWING, FUTURE, and LATER as SUBSEQUENT; BUSINESS, GREETING, MEMBERSHIP, and PLAYING as kinds of CARDS; and BROW, CYA, PIN, and WHIT as colors missing their final letters. The key traps are the noun phrase a rash of… and the temptation to put COMING with the influx words.
Quick Recap
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