Free tools Windows power users keep installed
One-click scans. No signup required.
Spoiler warning: This guide gives progressively stronger hints before revealing the categories and answers for NYT Connections #917, the puzzle published on Sunday, December 14, 2025. Stop before the answer section if you are still solving.
Connections asks you to divide 16 words into four groups of four. The groups range from yellow, usually the most approachable, to purple, often the trickiest. You have only a limited number of incorrect guesses, so look for one clean category at a time and be cautious with words that could fit more than one idea.
Hints for Connections #917 on December 14
Here are the clues in increasing order of specificity. They do not give away the individual words.
- Yellow: To praise someone excessively.
- Green: Characters or objects from stories by a famous Danish author.
- Blue: Words whose written form contains an L that is not pronounced.
- Purple: Well-known fictional pigs.
Today’s Connections categories
Ready for more? These are the four completed categories:
Recommended Free Tools
#1 Best Overall
- Yellow: Lay it on thick
- Green: Hans Christian Andersen figures
- Blue: Silent “L”
- Purple: Fictional pigs
Connections answers for Sunday, December 14, 2025
Yellow: Lay it on thick
FAWN, FLATTER, GUSH, PRAISE
Each word can describe giving someone or something extravagant praise. “Fawn” and “flatter” are especially direct fits, while “gush” and “praise” can also suggest enthusiastic or excessive admiration depending on how they are used.
Green: Hans Christian Andersen figures
DUCKLING, EMPEROR, MERMAID, PRINCESS
These words point to familiar subjects from Hans Christian Andersen’s tales: the ugly duckling, the emperor in The Emperor’s New Clothes, the little mermaid, and the princess in The Princess and the Pea. The author’s surname is Andersen, not “Anderson.”
Rank #2
Blue: Silent “L”
CALF, CHALK, COLONEL, WOULD
All four words contain a written L that is not heard in standard English pronunciation. The L is silent in calf, chalk, and would. Colonel is a particularly deceptive example because its spelling and pronunciation do not line up in the way many players might expect.
Purple: Fictional pigs
BABE, NAPOLEON, PIGLET, PORKY
These are recognizable pig characters from different works: Babe from Babe, Napoleon from George Orwell’s Animal Farm, Piglet from Winnie-the-Pooh, and Porky Pig from Looney Tunes. The category relies more on general pop-culture knowledge than on a shared word pattern, which helps make it the puzzle’s purple group.
Do these 3 things before closing this tab:
1Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches2Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors3Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteWhy this puzzle can be tricky
The yellow group is broad: several words can suggest approval or admiration without necessarily meaning “praise excessively.” That makes it easy to identify one or two likely matches but harder to commit to the full set.
The green and purple groups also use familiar story associations rather than a single grammatical or spelling rule. “Duckling,” “mermaid,” “princess,” and “emperor” become a clean group only when you recognize the Andersen connection. Likewise, the pig category brings together names from children’s literature, animation, film, and political satire.
The blue group is the most mechanical once spotted, but it is easy to overlook because the four words have no obvious meaning in common. Read the words aloud and compare their spelling with their pronunciation; that exposes the silent letter.
Want more puzzles?
If you enjoy the daily game but want a screen-free option, The New York Times Games: Puzzle Mania! is a 224-page hardcover collection that includes analogue versions of several NYT Games, including Connections-style puzzles. It is a separate collection and is not the source of the answers above.
Crashes, No Sound, or Screen Glitches?
Random freezes, missing sound and display glitches usually trace back to one bad driver. Find and replace yours safely.Free scan · under a minutePC Slower Than It Used to Be?
A free scan shows the junk files, broken settings and background clutter dragging Windows down - then fixes them in one click.Free scan · Windows 10 & 11Date clarification
This guide is specifically for Sunday, December 14, 2025, which was Connections puzzle #917. December 14, 2024 was a Saturday and had a different Connections puzzle, so including the year is important when searching for this answer set. Contemporary puzzle coverage identifies the 2025 game and its solution categories; it is not an official New York Times archive page.
For a concise identification of the date, puzzle number, hints, and answer groups, see the reported guide to the December 14 Connections puzzle.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Connections answer for Sunday, December 14, 2025?
The four groups are Lay it on thick: FAWN, FLATTER, GUSH, PRAISE; Hans Christian Andersen figures: DUCKLING, EMPEROR, MERMAID, PRINCESS; Silent “L”: CALF, CHALK, COLONEL, WOULD; and Fictional pigs: BABE, NAPOLEON, PIGLET, PORKY.
What Connections puzzle number was December 14, 2025?
Sunday, December 14, 2025, was Connections puzzle #917.
Why is COLONEL in the silent-L category?
The word colonel contains a written L, but that L is not pronounced in standard English. Its pronunciation is closer to “kernel” than its spelling suggests.
The Bottom Line
Today’s four groups were: FAWN, FLATTER, GUSH, PRAISE; DUCKLING, EMPEROR, MERMAID, PRINCESS; CALF, CHALK, COLONEL, WOULD; and BABE, NAPOLEON, PIGLET, PORKY.
Quick Recap
Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon at the time of purchase will apply.
