You can solve NYT Connections without hints by waiting to submit until you can explain exactly why four words belong together—and by checking that none fits a stronger competing group. Read the full grid, look for both meaning and word patterns, then use each solved group to narrow the choices.
Know what you are solving
Connections presents 16 words. Your task is to divide them into four groups of four, with each group sharing a connection. The New York Times Help Center says, “Each puzzle has exactly one solution and is meant to be tricky by having words that could fit into multiple categories.” That overlap is why a plausible grouping is not automatically the right one.
Categories are color-coded by difficulty: yellow is easiest and purple is trickiest. The colors rank difficulty; they do not mean you must solve groups in that order. The daily puzzle releases at midnight in your timezone. The official archive goes back to June 12, 2023, and is available to All Access and Games subscribers. See the NYT Connections Help Center page for current access details.
Use a deliberate solving routine
1. Read the whole grid before choosing a group
Take in all 16 words before committing to the first appealing theme. Jot down candidate connections if that helps, but keep them tentative. Seeing the whole grid makes it easier to notice that a word could belong to more than one apparent category.
2. State the rule behind each candidate
For every possible group, say what all four words have in common in one clear, repeatable rule. “They are related to music” is too broad if several other words could also qualify. A stronger explanation specifies the relationship and accounts for each word without special pleading.
Then check each word against the other candidates. Ask whether one has a more precise or structural fit elsewhere. If a theme seems to contain five words, treat that as a reason to investigate the overlap, not as proof that the first four you noticed are correct.
Rank #2
3. Check meanings and word structure
Start with literal relationships such as synonyms or shared categories, but do not stop there. Test whether words share a prefix or suffix, precede or follow the same word, contain a hidden word, sound alike, or can be rearranged as anagrams. These are useful possibilities to check, not guaranteed mechanics for any color. Purple is generally the trickiest category, but the color alone does not tell you what kind of connection to expect.
4. Submit the best-supported group, not merely the easiest-looking one
Choose the four words whose connection has the clearest rule and fewest competing explanations. If another group is more certain, solve that one first—even if it does not look like the easiest color. Once a correct group disappears from the board, reassess the remaining words instead of relying on your original guesses.
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Solving a clear group reduces the number of possibilities and can expose a relationship that was obscured by the full grid. If you keep seeing the same weak theme, shuffle the tiles to break the visual arrangement that may be anchoring your attention. Before another submission, check whether the remaining words support a specific rule rather than simply sharing a broad association.
How to respond to common traps
- An obvious theme has an extra word: Compare all candidates and look for the tighter four-word rule. One word may be a decoy for that broad theme or may have a stronger fit elsewhere.
- A familiar meaning seems to fit: Consider whether the word is being used in a less familiar sense or as part of a word pattern. Judge it by the exact rule that explains the group, not by its most familiar association alone.
- The last four do not form a literal category: Recheck shared-word patterns, prefixes, suffixes, hidden words, sound-alikes, and anagrams. The connection may be structural rather than a straightforward topic.
- You feel you must solve yellow before purple: You do not. Use the group with the strongest evidence, then let elimination help with the rest.
What published solver research can—and cannot—tell you
A 2024 paper by Angel Yahir Loredo Lopez, Tyler McDonald, and Ali Emami describes a dataset of 358 Connections-derived puzzles. In a separate experiment evaluating 100 puzzles, human participants scored 56% in the no-hints condition; the best tested model, GPT-4, scored 45%. Humans scored 60.67% with full hints. These are results under the paper’s specific experimental conditions, not a forecast for every player, puzzle, or current AI system. Read the 2024 paper for its dataset and methods.
The practical lesson is not that a particular technique guarantees a solve. Instead, reduce avoidable guesses: demand a precise rule, check for overlap, and use the board’s changing set of words as evidence. A secondary guide, NYT Game Solver’s Connections strategy tips, also recommends shuffling when the arrangement has you stuck.
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