NYT Connections #1158 Hints and Answers for Wednesday, August 12

Word-game fans chasing their daily streaks have a fresh challenge from the New York Times: Connections refreshes at midnight in each time zone, which means some players are always solving the “today” puzzle while others are still working through yesterday’s. For Wednesday’s session, the game is listed as number 1158, and the clues hinge on grouping four answers at a time into distinct categories.

The puzzle’s starting set includes: LEMON, TREE, HARBOR, FINE PRINT, GREAT WHITE, GREEN, GOODBYE, NURSE, BULL, BING, FOSTER, SCOTT, BENES, OKAYAMA, POISON DART, and MAINTAIN. If you’re working without spoilers, the first guiding theme points toward phrasing that means “look after something” for one color group, while another color set is tied to amphibians, a third leans into sitcom surnames tied to NBC, and the final category involves answers that begin with affirmative responses.

NYT Connections #1158: categories and solutions

For game number 1158, the completed category answers are:

• Yellow: HOLD ONTO, AS A FEELING — FOSTER, HARBOR, MAINTAIN, NURSE
• Green: KINDS OF FROGS — BULL, GREEN, POISON DART, TREE
• Blue: NBC SITCOM SURNAMES — BENES, BING, LEMON, SCOTT
• Purple: STARTING WITH AFFIRMATIVE RESPONSES — FINE PRINT, GOODBYE, GREAT WHITE, OKAYAMA

For players comparing notes, the same page also includes yesterday’s completed results for Tuesday’s puzzle (game #1157). That set’s solutions were: DOOMED (DONE, SUNK, THROUGH, TOAST), BASIC CABLE CHANNELS (BET, BRAVO, HISTORY, USA), WORDS IN AN AUCTIONEER’S CHANT (GOING, ONCE, SOLD, TWICE), and HOMOPHONES OF FACIAL FEATURES (AYE, HARE, KNOWS, TUNG).

How Connections works (and what to watch for)

Connections is a free daily word game playable via the NYT Games website on both desktop and mobile. The core challenge is to sort sixteen tiles into four groups of four, where each group sits in a different difficulty band: green is typically the easiest, yellow is a step up, blue is usually tougher, and purple is generally the most difficult. The game allows up to four mistakes, so you can experiment a bit while refining your category logic.

The design can be tricky in familiar ways for anyone who’s played other word puzzles: categories can be disguised by homophones or other wording traps, so careful reading matters even when a connection seems obvious at first glance.