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NYT Connections gives you 16 words and asks you to sort them into four groups of four. Each group shares one precise connection, and you have four mistakes available before the puzzle ends. The reliable approach is to read the whole board, identify a testable category, submit the group you are most certain about, and then use the reduced board to expose the remaining overlaps.
What NYT Connections is
Connections is a daily word game from The New York Times. Its central challenge is finding themes among apparently unrelated words. The board contains exactly 16 entries. Your job is to divide every entry into four groups, with four words in each group.
Every puzzle has one intended solution. That does not mean every clue points in only one direction: the same word can appear to fit several themes, and the puzzle deliberately uses those overlaps as red herrings. A group is valid only when all four words share the same specific relationship.
The four completed groups are marked by difficulty colors:
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- Yellow: the easiest intended connection.
- Green: a moderate connection.
- Blue: a more difficult connection.
- Purple: the trickiest connection, often involving wordplay or an indirect relationship.
The colors describe the puzzle editor’s intended difficulty, not a required solving order. You can solve a blue or purple group first if it is the one you recognize with the greatest certainty.
Where to play and when a new puzzle appears
Connections is available through the New York Times Games website and in the New York Times Games and News apps. The daily puzzle is released at midnight in your local time zone. The game is free to play on all of those platforms.
Signing in is useful if you switch between devices because it lets the service retain your progress. Without a sign-in, progress may not follow you from a phone to a computer or between app and browser sessions.
How a game works
- Read all 16 words. Do not start by tapping the first pair that looks related. Scan the complete board so you can see possible overlaps and unusual words.
- Form a precise category. Describe the connection in a few words before you submit it. “Types of knot” is testable; “things that feel related” is not.
- Select four entries. Tap or click the four words that satisfy your proposed category.
- Submit the group. If it is correct, those four words disappear and the game shows the group’s color. If it is wrong, you use one of your mistakes.
- Repeat with the reduced board. Four solved words leave 12, then eight, then four. The remaining entries often make a previously hidden relationship obvious.
- Finish the last group. When three groups are solved, the final four words form the remaining category by elimination, but they must still belong to one coherent theme.
There is no separate timer requirement in the basic game. The key resource is your mistake allowance: the fourth incorrect submission ends the puzzle.
The four-guess budget
You get four mistakes in a puzzle. The fourth mistake is game-ending, so a speculative click can cost the opportunity to test a better idea later. A correct group removes four words and reduces the number of competing interpretations, which is why certainty is more valuable than speed at the beginning.
| Action | Board after the action | Strategic effect |
|---|---|---|
| Start | 16 words | Many possible overlaps; read broadly. |
| Solve one group | 12 words | One connection is confirmed and four distractions disappear. |
| Solve two groups | 8 words | Remaining categories have fewer plausible combinations. |
| Solve three groups | 4 words | The final category should be clear, but still needs to be valid. |
A useful rule is to submit the group you are surest of, not necessarily the group you noticed first. This preserves guesses and gives you better information after each successful submission.
A step-by-step method for finding categories
1. Make a complete first pass
Read every word once without selecting anything. Notice words with multiple meanings, words that could be a noun or a verb, proper names, unusual spellings, and entries that might be part of a familiar list. Early recognition is useful, but committing immediately can hide the board’s deliberate traps.
2. Mark obvious relationships mentally
Look for direct semantic sets such as kinds of objects, occupations, animals, foods, or actions. Also check for formal sets with a fixed membership, such as items in a named series or a group that normally appears together. Do not submit until you can explain why all four entries belong and why a fifth tempting word does not.
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3. State the category sharply
Turn a vague impression into a short rule. “Words that can follow ‘stone’,” “___ that are types of knot,” or “homophones of something used in music” are useful because each can be checked against all four entries. If your label is so broad that many other board words could qualify, it is not ready.
4. Test the group against every word
Ask two questions: Does each selected word fit the same rule in the same sense, and does any unselected word fit more naturally? A category that requires one word to use a different meaning or an unusual spelling may be a decoy. Conversely, a difficult group can be legitimate when its rule is exact and consistent.
5. Submit the strongest group
Choose the set with the least ambiguity. A correct submission removes four words, while a wrong submission consumes one of four available mistakes. The information gained from removing a certain group is usually worth more than the small advantage of trying a weaker theory first.
6. Re-scan after each success
Do not keep solving the remaining board with the assumptions you had before the first group disappeared. Start another full scan. A word that looked like part of a broad category may now reveal a more specific role, and the missing fourth member of a group may become visible.
7. Use elimination only when the rule remains coherent
With four words left, they must form the final group, but do not force an arbitrary explanation. If the last four do not share a defensible connection, revisit an earlier group; a previous category may have included a red herring.
Category patterns to check when you are stuck
When ordinary meanings do not produce four clean groups, change the kind of relationship you are looking for. The following patterns account for many difficult categories.
Named sets
Some groups consist of members of a recognized set: a series, roster, classification, or established collection. The words may not be semantically similar on their own. Ask whether the four entries belong to the same named family rather than merely sharing a general topic.
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Four words may express the same action, quality, or object in different registers. Check whether the connection is exact enough to distinguish the intended four from a fifth word that is only loosely related.
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Words before or after a shared word
Try placing a common word immediately before or after each candidate. The resulting phrases should be familiar and follow the same grammatical pattern. If one phrase is obscure while the others are standard, treat the idea as tentative.
Prefixes and suffixes
A group can be formed by adding the same beginning or ending to each entry. Test the complete resulting words, not just whether the fragments look similar. The shared addition should create four established terms.
Hidden words
Inspect the letters inside the entries. A category may use a word concealed across part of an entry or at a boundary between sounds. Check spelling and letter order carefully; a merely suggestive substring is not enough.
Homophones
Say the words aloud and consider whether they sound like members of another category. Homophone groups depend on pronunciation, so accents can affect intuition. Look for a consistent sound relationship rather than a one-off pun.
Anagrams
Rearranged letters may produce words in a shared set. Compare the complete letter inventory and watch for an extra or missing letter. An anagram category should work cleanly for all four entries.
Near-misses and red herrings
A word may look like a member of a category because of a common meaning, spelling, or phrase, while its intended role is elsewhere. When five words appear to fit, assume one is the decoy and search for the more specific interpretation that places it in another group.
How to handle a five-word apparent category
Five apparent matches are a warning sign, not evidence that the puzzle is broken. Connections is designed so that one word can satisfy a broad reading while belonging to a different, sharper category under another meaning.
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- For each of the five candidates, list a second meaning, spelling, pronunciation, or phrase association.
- Look for the candidate whose alternative meaning forms a complete group with three other board words.
- Keep the four that share the most specific and consistent rule.
- Submit only when the rejected word has a credible home elsewhere.
This process is more reliable than choosing the four that feel most familiar. The intended category is often the one that explains both the selected words and the apparent outlier.
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When to shuffle the board
The layout can influence pattern recognition. If the same words keep appearing as a visual cluster, shuffle the board and inspect the entries in a new arrangement. You can also focus on one word at a time, asking what meanings, phrases, sounds, or sets it might belong to before looking for its partners.
Shuffling does not change the puzzle or provide a hint. It simply removes a visual bias that may be making an accidental row or column look like a category.
Understanding the color order
| Color | Intended difficulty | What to expect |
|---|---|---|
| Yellow | Easiest | The connection is usually direct and recognizable. |
| Green | Moderate | The words share a relationship that may require a narrower interpretation. |
| Blue | Hard | The category may depend on less obvious knowledge or wording. |
| Purple | Trickiest | Wordplay, hidden words, homophones, anagrams, or shared prefixes and suffixes are more likely. |
You are not expected to solve colors in that order. A purple group can be your safest submission if you recognize its exact mechanism, while a yellow-looking group can be dangerous if several words fit the same broad description.
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Submitting a broad theme
Symptom: You can describe the group only with a loose label such as “things associated with travel.”
Fix: Narrow the rule until it predicts exactly four entries and excludes the nearest alternatives.
Chasing the first pattern you see
Symptom: You select a group before reading the rest of the board.
Fix: Read all 16 words first and compare at least two candidate categories before spending a guess.
Ignoring alternate meanings
Symptom: One word seems to fit only because you are using a different sense from the other three.
Fix: Check dictionary-level meanings, parts of speech, common phrases, pronunciation, and spelling.
Assuming categories must be semantic
Symptom: You find no four-word topical sets and conclude the board has no pattern.
Fix: Test wordplay mechanisms, named sets, shared prefixes or suffixes, hidden words, homophones, and anagrams.
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Using guesses to gather information
Symptom: You submit a group that is merely plausible because you want to see what happens.
Fix: Treat each guess as valuable. Confirm the category and look for the rejected word’s alternative home first.
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Continuing with a disproved theory
Symptom: After a wrong submission, you keep trying minor variations of the same category.
Fix: Remove that theory from consideration and reclassify the words from scratch, especially the entries that appeared to support it.
A practical decision framework
Use this sequence whenever two or more groups seem possible:
- Certainty: Which set has four entries that fit without exceptions?
- Specificity: Can you name the category precisely rather than describe a general topic?
- Overlap: Does the set leave every tempting fifth word with a plausible alternative role?
- Wordplay check: Have you tested phrases, sounds, hidden strings, anagrams, and affixes?
- Mistake conservation: If the group is wrong, will you still have enough guesses to test the remaining theories?
This framework favors accuracy over speed. Fast solving is a result of recognizing a high-confidence group quickly, not of submitting low-confidence groups earlier.
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What happens after a correct or incorrect submission
A correct group is removed from the board and identified by its difficulty color. The smaller board gives you new information because words that competed for the same category are no longer present. An incorrect group remains on the board and costs one mistake. You can continue while mistakes remain, but the fourth incorrect submission ends that puzzle.
Because a successful group removes four entries, solving one certain category can be more useful than testing several uncertain combinations. It both protects the guess budget and changes the structure of the problem.
Origins and editorial context
Connections launched in beta on June 12, 2023. Wikipedia credits Wyna Liu as the puzzle writer and editor associated with the game. The daily format and fixed 16-word board have made the game’s central skill easy to explain but difficult to master: every entry must be accounted for, and broad similarities are intentionally unreliable.
No authoritative player-count, win-rate, or popularity statistic is necessary to learn the game, so those figures should not be used to judge an individual solve.
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Quick checklist before you submit
- Have you read all 16 entries?
- Can you state the category in a short, testable phrase?
- Do all four words fit the same rule and meaning?
- Does a fifth word fit only because the category is too broad?
- Have you considered phrases, named sets, hidden words, homophones, anagrams, and affixes?
- Is this the group you are most certain about?
- Have you preserved enough of your four mistakes to test another idea if needed?
The essential strategy
Connections rewards disciplined classification more than random association. Read the whole board, define a precise category, reject the red herring when five words appear to fit, and submit the most certain group first. After every correct group, start a fresh scan of the remaining words. The yellow-to-purple colors indicate intended difficulty, but your solving order should follow confidence and the need to conserve your four guesses.
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