Looking for today's Connections answer for puzzle #545 on December 7, which is considerably harder than yesterday's puzzle, this puzzle from Connections Companion has a difficulty rating of 3.7 out of 5.

We update our Connections clues and hints daily. And if the hints are not enough, all four solutions are listed below, along with the category title and related words. In addition, for those of you reading this in another time zone, I have included a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #544.

There are spoilers for connection 545. Only read this if you want to know the answer to today's connection.

Or see our NYT Connections How to Play Guide for tips on how to solve the puzzle without our help.

While today's wordle solution guide recommends the best wordle starting words as a strategy, the Connections solution depends on identifying the categories that are connected from the 16 words. The difficulty of each category is represented by a color, with yellow being the easiest grouping and purple the most difficult. Hints are helpful as the answer is displayed after four wrong guesses.

If you need a hint to help you solve the groupings, here are each theme in order of difficulty:

If you read these hints, you should at least be able to find the answer to today's connection. If not, please continue reading for larger hints. Also, if you only want to know the answer, scroll down further.

A bigger hint is to look at the WNBA after fishing and pair the two things together, getting a little longer.

Now, what's the answer to today's Round 545 connection?

Drumroll please.

It's strange that yesterday's puzzle, which was supposed to be easy, took a bit of time, but today's difficult puzzle was a piece of cake.

However, if you don't know WNBA and Liberty, Storm, Sun, and Wings, this one might be more difficult. I solved the blue group first.

As for fishing, flies and lures stood out. Bait and chum were easy to find from there as it pertains to fishing.

I didn't see any purple categories today, but luckily there were yellows for affiliate, associate, equate, and relate.

Thus, we finished purple with longhorns, longhorns, and longhorn-legs, with longbows, longhorns (probably the author), longhorns, and longhorn-legs. I thought of Foghorn Leghorn, but this is my brain.

Are you reading this late in the day? According to Connections Companion, the difficulty level was 2.8 out of 5.

After several days of difficult puzzles, Fridays provide a bit of a break for the weekend. I solved this problem.

Perplex and vex stuck as synonyms, so I searched for similar words and got puzzle and stump as baffled.

I left X as it was, and before the title was revealed, I thought Hex and Jinx were curses; Pox and spell were easily found from there, and I found Pox and spell as a synonym of Pox and Jinx, and Pox and spell as a synonym of Pox and Jinx.

For a while I was thinking of former soccer player Mia Hamm. With the yellow and green identified, I finally saw the Toy Story connection and was able to see Buzz Lightyear, Slinky Dog, Rex the T-Rex, and Hamm the piggy bank.

And it ended with purple and its suffix. Cottage-core, stupid gamer-gaters, Cryptomania, Red-pilled, and so on. Most are fads or controversies.