The New York Times' Connections game is one of the most challenging of the numerous daily puzzles that is accessible online.
It is the second-most-played game behind Wordle and has garnered a lot of interest since its release on June 12, 2023.
But it doesn’t need to be so difficult. If you’re a first timer or you just need a refresher, here’s how to play Connections with tips to win the game, as well as today’s answers.
How to play Connections
In the word game Connections, players must identify themes among words. Given 16 words, players must identify groups of four objects that have a common characteristic.
Each group is given a colour (either purple, blue, green, or yellow), with purple being the most difficult and yellow being the easiest.
With terms that can be classified into more than one category, each problem has a single solution and is designed to be challenging. Editors use the Oxford Dictionary to curate words and categories.
The Connections game is renewed daily at midnight.
At the moment, Connections is free to play on all platforms, so you don't need to sign up or log in.
Tips to win the game
It’s a tricky word game compared with other games out there, like Wordle, but luckily the New York Times has compiled a list of strategies you can use in order to succeed.
If you pay attention, there are lots of hints in the game itself.
There is also a Connections Companion on the site, where you can find hints for the day’s puzzle and share your score with the Connector community in the comments.
If you're completely at a loss, it's advisable to guess. The game will provide you with the hint “One away!” if you're missing one term in a particular category. To determine which term doesn't fit with the others, keep in mind those guesses.
Complicated rhymes, homophones, anagrams, palindromes, unmarked fill-in-the-blank sentences, and entire wild cards can all be found in the hardest category, purple.
Morgan Payne, who frequently solves Connections for her TikTok fans, stated, “I’ll try to look at patterns of what Connections has done in the past.”
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♬ Yacht Club - MusicBox
Word and letter patterns, pop culture hints (such as music and movie titles), and fill-in-the-blank phrases are some of the prevalent categories that Payne recognises from prior experience.
Puzzle creator Wyna Liu says watch out for overlap and “eliminate options and clear the board as much as possible”.
The boards are compiled by Liu and then tested and edited by senior puzzle editor Joel Fagliano. According to Fagliano, he begins each solution by searching for phrases that have only one definition. While a word like “train” might signify many distinct things, “metaverse” can only mean one thing.
Reddit is also another good source to look for clues and tips.
In fact, one user shared their entire strategy with the internet. The most obvious category is most likely a trap, according to the Reddit user and that “it’s important to look at the structure of the word as well as the meaning. The linguistics categories are usually not easy to spot.
“If you’re stuck, take a word and make sentences with it. Try to think of as many contexts it can fit into as possible. For example, “pine” could fit under categories such as trees, people named Chris, words that mean to have a crush on someone, or words that end in -apple, just off the top of my head.
“Use the four allowed mistakes to your advantage. Finding out three words are definitely in a category is more helpful than not knowing at all. Lastly, if the shuffle button isn’t helping, I recommend coming back to it a couple hours later. I usually give myself 10 minutes and, if I don’t get it, I’ll come back to it later on and, half the time, I’m able to solve it then.”
How to play Connections
The game can be found on the New York Times’ page here.
