Connections hints and definitions for November 23, 2023

Today's Connections puzzle is full of difficult to guess words like proper nouns, foreign loan words and countries with alternate spellings.

To help you make it through unscathed, here are a few Connections hints to push you in the right direction!

Connections is a new word game from the New York Times which tasks you with sorting a random-seeming group of 16 words into 4 hidden categories. To come out on top, you have to deduce the secret relationships between the words and order them correctly.

Since it's tougher than it looks, we've given you a clue for every category as well as listed the definitions of each featured word - sometimes that's enough to latch onto something you've missed.

But if you're at the end of your tether, we've also just listed the answers down below; behind spoiler tags to avoid you seeing anything you don't want to, of course!

Connections hints for November 23, 2023

• Group 1 hint: America has more blue than all of these - Alternative words: Canada, Indonesia, Denmark
• Group 2 hint: What does the Earth have in common with these foods? - Alternative words: Pizza, Bread, Pastry
• Group 3 hint: You can't hear the kettle boiling - Alternative words: Ballet, Valet, Gourmet
• Group 4 hint: Legends of the highest stature - Alternative words: O'Neal, Bryant, Ming

Connections definitions for November 23, 2023

• Ragout - A French, slow-cooked stew with meat or fish and vegetables
• Turkey - A large, gobbling bird native to North America, or the old spelling of the country of Turkiye
• Turnover - The total sales made by a business over a certain time period, losing the ball in a sport like Rugby or Football, or a filled pastry made by folding dough and baking it
• Jordan - A common first or surname, or a Middle Eastern country bordering Saudi Arabia
• Tunisia - A North African country bordering Algeria and Libya
• Curry - A meat or vegetable dish served in a spice-seasoned sauce and associated with Asian cuisine, or a common surname
• Parfait - A cold dessert made of eggs and cream
• James - A common given and surname
• Pasty - A savoury pastry often associated with the Southern British county of Cornwall
• Bouquet - An arranged bunch of flowers, or the projection of a smell
• Pie - A savoury or sweet dish made of a pastry case and filling
• Poland - An Eastern European country between Germany and Ukraine
• Tart - A sweet or savoury pastry dish with an open lid, or a sharp or sour taste
• Rapport - A close relationship of mutual understanding
• Japan - A Far Eastern country next to Korea
• Bird - A warm-blooded vertebrate animal which typically lays eggs and can fly, or a common surname

Connections answers for November 23, 2023

Click or press on the spoiler tags below to reveal the hidden Connections answers.

• Group 1 answer: "Countries with red and white flags" - Japan, Poland, Tunisia, Turkey
• Group 2 answer: "Foods with crusts" - Pasty, Pie, Turnover, Tart
• Group 3 answer: "Ending with a silent "T" - Bouquet, Parfait, Ragout, Rapport
• Group 4 answer: "NBA Greats" - James, Jordan, Bird, Curry

Hopefully you weren't tripped up by Turkey - I lost a guess thinking I'd been clever spotting that the country is now spelled Turkiye and chose Jordan as a country instead. Otherwise it was a pretty tough Connections today with two pretty arbitary categories and a load of proper nouns.

Well done if you're a big basketball fan and spotted Lebron James, Michael Jordan, Larry Bird and Steph Curry straight away. It's one of those categories that's obvious once you know it - but that's the whole game isn't it?