NYT Connections asks you to sort 16 words into four groups of four, with each group sharing a theme. The challenge is that a word may seem to belong in more than one group, so look for a complete, consistent set before you submit a guess.
What is the goal of NYT Connections?
Find four groups of four words that share something in common. The New York Times Help Center says each puzzle has exactly one solution, but its words are deliberately chosen so that some may appear to fit multiple categories. Editors curate the words and categories using the Oxford Dictionary.
For example, a category might contain kinds of fish or words that begin with “FIRE.” The connection can be a shared meaning, phrase, or another relationship between the words.
What do the category colors mean?
The four colors indicate relative difficulty, from yellow, the easiest category, through green and blue to purple, the trickiest. The Help Center does not define precise meanings for the two middle colors, and the colors do not mean you must solve the categories in that order.
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How to approach a puzzle
- Scan all 16 words. Look for possible shared meanings, phrases, or other patterns, but treat early matches as hypotheses.
- Check for overlap. Before settling on a group, ask whether each word could plausibly belong to another category. The game is designed to make some words seem to fit more than one theme.
- Look for a complete set. A convincing connection is not enough if it leaves a word unexplained or makes another likely group impossible. Check the remaining words for a full group of four.
- Submit only when the pattern holds together. A partial pattern may be a deliberate distraction. Test it against the rest of the grid rather than relying on the first association that comes to mind.
A research paper presented at COLING 2025 illustrates this kind of misdirection with “Normal”: it can suggest a “Status Quo” association, while the intended “Skin Types” group also contains “Dry,” “Combination,” and “Oily.” The paper’s NYT-CONNECTIONS benchmark contains 358 puzzles; that is the dataset size, not a player statistic or a measure of the game’s popularity.
Where can you play, and do you need an account?
The NYT Help Center lists the NYT Games app, the Connections website, nytimes.com/theathletic, and the News app as places to play. It says the game is free on those platforms without registration. An NYT account is recommended if you want to retain progress across devices or platforms. The daily puzzle releases at midnight in your timezone, according to the Help Center.
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What do the archive and Connections Bot offer?
The Help Center describes an archive of puzzles dating from June 12, 2023, to the present for All Access and Games subscribers. Archived plays affect some statistics but do not affect current or maximum streaks.
Connections Bot offers difficulty and rating information, category reveals, mistakes, and guess-by-guess analysis. The Help Center lists it as available to All Access, Home Delivery, and Games subscribers. Subscription eligibility and access details can change, so check the current Help Center for the latest information.
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Which game mechanics are confirmed?
The Help Center page cited here establishes the objective, color difficulty scale, and intentional category overlap. It does not explain how guesses are submitted, how many mistakes are allowed, or what a “one away” message means. Check the live game for its current instructions rather than treating those details as official rules based on the Help Center page.
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