The NYT Connections answers for Wednesday, August 12, 2026, are below. Puzzle #1158 has a deceptively simple Yellow group and a Purple category that will catch most players off guard – four words or phrases that each begin with a different way of saying yes. Hints come first for anyone still working through it.
NYT Connections Hints – August 12, 2026
Yellow: These four words all mean to hold onto or sustain a feeling over time, as in to nurse a grudge.
Green: Each of these is a type of frog – watch out for the one that looks like a color.
Blue: Surnames of characters from NBC sitcoms. Think multiple decades of Thursday night television.
Purple: Each answer starts with a word that means yes or all right. The connection is hidden inside the longer word or phrase.
NYT Connections Answers – August 12, 2026 (#1158)
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
The Yellow group is today’s most accessible category if you approach it from the right angle. HARBOR a grudge, NURSE a wound, FOSTER a sense of something, MAINTAIN a belief – all four verbs describe the quiet, sustained act of holding onto a feeling rather than releasing it. Players who read NURSE as a medical profession or FOSTER as a surname will spend unnecessary guesses elsewhere.
Green is a straightforward frog category with one planted decoy: GREEN itself, which reads as a color before it reads as a frog. The American green frog is a legitimate species, so the word earns its spot. BULL (bullfrog), POISON DART, and TREE are all familiar frog types that most solvers will identify quickly once the category’s logic clicks.
Blue rewards knowledge of NBC’s sitcom run across four decades: BENES is Elaine from Seinfeld, BING is Chandler from Friends, LEMON is Liz from 30 Rock, and SCOTT is Michael from The Office. All four shows aired on NBC; all four surnames belong to characters who defined their respective series.
Purple is where the puzzle earns its difficulty. FINE PRINT opens with FINE, GOODBYE opens with GOOD, GREAT WHITE opens with GREAT, and OKAYAMA – the Japanese city – opens with OKAY. Each longer word or phrase carries a different casual affirmative at the front, which is the kind of lateral connection that is nearly impossible to see without having already committed to a wrong answer first.
Yesterday’s puzzle is covered in the NYT Connections answers for August 11, 2026 (#1157).
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