NYT Connections hint and answers for Sunday, 12th Jan

This guide is for a previous day! Looking for today's? Check out the Connections hint for Wednesday 15th January!

Need a hint for today's Connections on Sunday, 12th January? In some parts of the world, they say that Connections is one of the best hangover cures. Whether or not that's true is up for debate, but the Connections puzzles themselves have certainly been known to cause a few headaches on the more challenging days.

So to help keep your Sunday pain-free, we've prepared a collection of Connections hints for today, along with sections below revealing the groups in today's puzzle, and the full Connections answer itself. Read on if you're stuck!

In this guide:

• How to play Connections
• Connections hint for Sunday 12th January
• What are today's Connections words?
• What are today's Connections groups?
• What are today's Connections answers?

Here are the 16 Connections words for today:

Comets	Invention	Coin Toss	Defender
Court	Asteroids	Fairy Tale	Dress Coat
Fiction	Romance	Sonic The Hedgehog	Centipede
Charm	Fantasy	Breakout	Pursue

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How to play Connections

Connections is one of the most popular (and challenging) daily puzzle games published by the New York Times (owners of Wordle). The aim of Connections is to group the 16 words of the day into four groups, where each group of four words has a common theme.

For instance, the words "Hook", "Nana", "Peter", and "Wendy" are all Peter Pan characters. Or to take another example, "Action", "Ballpark", "Go", and "Stick" are all words which commonly come just before the word "Figure".

Your job is to figure out what these themes are that connect the various words together - but be wary, because a lot of the time there are deceptive red herring connections placed purely to throw you off! To win the game, you have to find all four Connections without making 4 mistakes. On your fourth mistake, the game is over and the answer is revealed automatically.

Each of the four groups in each day's Connections puzzle is also assigned a different colour, which represents how easy or difficult the Connection is to find. These colours are: Yellow (Easiest), Green (Easy), Blue (Medium), and Purple (Hardest).

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Connections hint for Sunday 12th January

Here are your Connections hints for today:

• Yellow: Contrary to reality
• Green: Things to do to your crush
• Blue: The 90s had some real hits
• Purple: Many animals would also fit into this group
• Extra hint 1: Asteroids and Comets belong to two different groups
• Extra hint 2: Centipede and Defender belong to the same group

If you need a bit more help, tap the spoiler text below to reveal one word belonging to each group:

• Yellow: Invention
• Green: Charm
• Blue: Defender
• Purple: Dress Coat

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Spoiler warning! Today's Connections groups are revealed just below!

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What are today's Connections groups?

If you need an even bigger clue to figure out today's Connections puzzle, below we'll reveal the four correct Connections groups - the themes which link together each set of four words in the Connections grid.

Here are the Connections groups for today:

• Yellow: Fabrication
• Green: Woo
• Blue: Classic Atari Games
• Purple: Things Featuring Tails

Now that you know the themes for the various different Connections in today's puzzle, see if you can solve it! If not, check below for the full answer.

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Spoiler warning! Today's Connections answer lies ahead!

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What is today's Connections answer?

Here is the answer to today's Connections puzzle on Sunday, 12th January:

• Yellow: Fabrication (Fairy Tale, Fantasy, Fiction, Invention)
• Green: Woo (Charm, Court, Pursue, Romance)
• Blue: Classic Atari Games (Asteroids, Breakout, Centipede, Defender)
• Purple: Things Featuring Tails (Coin Toss, Comets, Dress Coat, Sonic The Hedgehog)

Today's Connections puzzle was deceptive. I wasted my first guess with an immediate attempt to connect literary genres ("Romance", "Fairy Tale", "Fantasy", "Fiction"). After that, I spent a bit more time and care with my remaining guesses.

Thankfully, I well remember my childhood days spent playing Asteroids, Breakout, Centipede, and most of all, Defender. They were my first guess, and thanks to my childhood knowledge, I was able to deftly sidestep the potential pitfall of combining "Asteroids" with "Comets".

After that I was able to realise where I went wrong before, and lumped "Romance" where it belonged in the green group with its other synonyms. And then the solution is clear: clearly four of the words describe things that aren't real. Yes, wise guy, I know Sonic The Hedgehog isn't real either.

Before I input the final group I did spend a moment to see if I could figure out its meaning, and I got there in the end. Quite clever, that group. I approve.

Congratulations if you got today's Connections answer right, with or without the help of our handy hints above! And if you didn't succeed today, don't worry - a new Connections puzzle is released every day at midnight, so you can try again tomorrow, just like with Wordle!