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NYT Connections gives you 16 words and asks you to sort them into four groups of four. Select four words that share a theme, submit the group, and keep solving until the board is cleared or you use your fourth incorrect submission. Yellow, green, blue, and purple indicate category difficulty—not different scoring systems.
The daily puzzle appears at midnight in your local time zone. You can play it through the official NYT Games page, the NYT Games app, NYTimes.com/The Athletic, and the News app.
What NYT Connections is
The New York Times describes Connections as “a word game that challenges players to find themes between words.” A board contains 16 words. Your job is to divide every word into four groups, with exactly four words in each group. A valid group can be based on a definition, a phrase, a word pattern, a cultural reference, or another relationship recognized by the puzzle’s editors.
Each puzzle has exactly one complete solution. That matters because several words are deliberately chosen to look as though they belong together. A word can seem to fit two different themes, but only one arrangement clears all 16 spaces into four correct groups. The words and categories are curated by editors using the Oxford Dictionary, so an obscure definition or a less-common sense of a word may be intentional.
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The standard board and objective
| Element | Standard Connections |
|---|---|
| Words shown | 16 |
| Words in a correct group | 4 |
| Groups to find | 4 |
| Solutions | Exactly one complete solution |
| Incorrect-submission allowance | Four incorrect submissions total; the fourth is the final failed attempt |
| Color categories | Yellow, green, blue, and purple |
The goal is not merely to identify four related words. You must identify the set of four that belongs to the puzzle’s intended category and leave a board that can still be partitioned into three complete groups. A group that looks reasonable in isolation can be wrong if it prevents a valid solution for the remaining words.
What the yellow, green, blue, and purple categories mean
Every solved group receives one color. The colors communicate relative difficulty in the order yellow, green, blue, then purple:
| Color | Typical difficulty | How to interpret it |
|---|---|---|
| Yellow | Easiest | The connection is usually the most direct or familiar. |
| Green | Moderate | The relationship may require a second meaning or a little wordplay. |
| Blue | Harder | The theme is less immediate or draws on a narrower reference. |
| Purple | Trickiest | The group often depends on an unusual interpretation, phrase, spelling pattern, or specialized knowledge. |
These colors are difficulty labels, not a separate scoring system. Solving a purple group does not earn more points than solving a yellow group, and the color does not change how many mistakes you have left. The color is revealed when a group is accepted, so it also gives you information about how the editors assessed that connection.
How to play Connections step by step
- Open the daily board. Use the NYT Games app or the official web game. The daily puzzle is released at midnight in your time zone, so a new board may appear at different clock times for players in different regions.
- Read all 16 words before selecting anything. Scan for obvious categories, repeated word forms, familiar titles, and words that can function in more than one way. Your first impression is useful, but it is not proof.
- Choose four candidate words. Select the four words that appear to share one precise relationship. A good candidate has a single explanation that applies naturally to all four words, not a vague association that could include half the board.
- Test the leftovers. Before submitting, ask whether the other 12 words can still form three groups of four. This check is essential because Connections is designed with overlapping possibilities.
- Submit the group. If the set is correct, those words are removed or marked as solved and its color is shown. If it is incorrect, the board remains and your mistake count increases.
- Re-evaluate after every result. A solved group changes the context of every remaining word. Re-read words that had two possible meanings and look for a category that has become more specific.
- Protect the final attempt. When you have already made three incorrect submissions, do not submit another speculative group. Use the remaining words to prove a complete arrangement first; the next wrong submission ends the puzzle.
Why a seemingly obvious group can be wrong
The central trick is controlled ambiguity. The editors may place four words that all appear to describe animals, for example, while intending a narrower category such as fish. They may also use a word that can be read as a noun, verb, name, or part of a phrase. The board tests whether you can find the intended relationship and distinguish it from a merely possible one.
Official-style example: four fish
Bass, Flounder, Salmon, and Trout form a group because each is a fish. Their meanings are direct, so this would generally be the sort of relationship associated with an easier category. The example illustrates that a category can be semantic rather than based on spelling.
Official-style example: words that start with FIRE
Ant, Drill, Island, and Opal can follow the word “fire” to make fire ant, fire drill, Fire Island, and fire opal. This is a phrase-completion pattern, not a claim that the four words otherwise belong to the same subject. Looking for a shared prefix or suffix is therefore as important as looking for a shared definition.
How many mistakes can you make?
You can submit up to four incorrect groups. The fourth incorrect submission is the last available attempt: another wrong answer is not possible because the puzzle has ended. NYT’s statistics page defines a win as completing a puzzle in under four mistakes, and its mistake histogram records results from zero through four mistakes.
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| Incorrect submissions | What it means |
|---|---|
| 0 | You solved the board without an incorrect submission; this can count as a perfect puzzle. |
| 1–3 | You solved the board and remain under the “under four mistakes” win threshold. |
| 4 | The fourth wrong submission is the final failed attempt in practice; a solved board is not recorded as a win under the stated threshold. |
The safest interpretation is to treat four mistakes as a hard stop and three mistakes as the point at which every remaining guess must be demonstrated rather than guessed. A correct submission does not consume a mistake.
A method for solving with fewer mistakes
Start with a relationship you can state precisely
Write the category in your head as a short label before selecting words: “four types of fish,” “words that follow fire,” or another exact description. If your label is only “things connected with water,” it is probably too broad. Precision helps you reject attractive but unintended combinations.
Separate category evidence from word familiarity
A word may feel as though it belongs because you recognize it from a movie, sport, brand, place, or idiom. That feeling is not enough. Ask what grammatical or semantic rule puts all four words in the same group. If you cannot explain the rule in one sentence, hold the word aside.
Look for the group that leaves a clean remainder
After identifying four candidates, mentally remove them and partition the remaining 12 words into three sets of four. If the remainder contains a stranded word or a group of only three, your first set is probably borrowing a word from another category. A valid solution must work globally, not just for one group.
Delay words with two plausible meanings
Ambiguous words are often the board’s hinges. Mark them mentally as “uncommitted” until another group becomes clear. Solving an unambiguous group first can force the ambiguous word into its intended role without spending a mistake.
Check word order and morphology
Try common constructions: a word before or after each candidate, singular and plural forms, abbreviations, names, and alternate parts of speech. The “fire” examples show why a shared prefix can be the real category even when the four bare words look unrelated.
Use solved colors as information, not as a score multiplier
When a group is accepted, its color tells you how difficult that category was judged. It does not tell you which remaining color is next or provide extra attempts. Use the removed words and the newly constrained board as your primary advantage.
Stop and prove the board before the fourth submission
With one mistake left, list the three or four complete groups you believe remain and explain every word in each. If two groups compete for the same word, do not submit until one interpretation makes the entire remainder work. This is the point at which a slow deduction is more valuable than a quick pattern match.
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Connections is offered through the NYT Games app, NYTimes.com/games/connections, NYTimes.com/The Athletic, and the News app. The daily board releases at midnight in the player’s local time zone. If a new puzzle does not appear when expected, check that the app or page has refreshed and that your device is using the intended time zone; the release statement is local-time based rather than one universal UTC time.
What you can see after solving
NYT’s statistics view can include your completed puzzles, win rate, current streak, maximum streak, perfect-puzzle count, and a histogram showing results from zero to four mistakes. These measures describe your history across played boards; they do not change the rules of the current puzzle.
Connections Bot
Connections Bot can provide a difficulty assessment, your personal rating, category difficulty and order, common mistakes, and a guess-by-guess analysis. According to the Help Center, Bot access is limited to All Access, Home Delivery, and Games subscribers. If the Bot controls are absent from your account, that restriction—not a scoring error—is the likely reason.
The Connections archive
For eligible subscribers, the archive reaches back to June 12, 2023. Playing an archived puzzle affects statistics, but archived play does not affect your current or maximum daily streak. Treat an archive board as practice and historical play rather than a way to extend the daily streak.
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Connections 3×3 uses the same basic idea on a smaller board. Nine items form three groups of three. It is an official bonus-puzzle variation, not a different mistake system: you can still make up to four mistakes.
Best Value
| Feature | Standard Connections | Connections 3×3 |
|---|---|---|
| Items on board | 16 words | 9 items |
| Items per group | 4 | 3 |
| Groups to solve | 4 | 3 |
| Colors used | Yellow, green, blue, purple | Yellow, blue, purple |
| Access context | Daily game | Official bonus puzzle |
| Mistake allowance | Up to four incorrect submissions | Up to four incorrect submissions |
Because each 3×3 group has only three items, one misleading word can have a larger effect on your deductions. Apply the same remainder test: a proposed trio is sound only if the six unselected items can still form two complete trios.
Common situations and what to do
“I found four words that clearly relate, but the submission was wrong.”
Recheck whether the relationship is too broad. Look for a narrower interpretation shared by another set, then test whether one of your four words belongs to that competing category. The puzzle’s unique-solution rule means a plausible relationship can still be an intentional decoy.
“I have three words for a category and cannot find the fourth.”
Search for alternate meanings, prefixes, suffixes, proper names, and singular or plural forms among the remaining words. Do not force a fourth word merely because the first three feel strong; a category is not established until all four fit naturally.
“The last four words do not seem related.”
That usually means an earlier group took the wrong word. Revisit the group with the broadest explanation and swap its ambiguous member with a word from the unresolved set. The exact-one-solution constraint guarantees that the final board can be partitioned, even if the intended connection is less familiar.
“I made three mistakes and am unsure whether to try again.”
Do not use the final attempt to test a hunch. Write down a complete four-group arrangement, verify every word’s role, and submit only when the remaining board has no competing arrangement that fits as well.
“My statistics show four mistakes.”
The histogram includes results from zero through four mistakes. A four-mistake result is recorded as its own outcome; it is not the same as a perfect puzzle or a win under four mistakes.
Quick Recap
Rules at a glance
- There are 16 words in the standard daily board.
- You must make four groups of four.
- Every puzzle has exactly one complete solution.
- Words may appear to fit multiple categories, which is an intentional source of difficulty.
- Yellow is easiest; green and blue are intermediate; purple is trickiest.
- The colors indicate difficulty, not extra points.
- The fourth incorrect submission is the final failed attempt.
- The daily game releases at midnight in your time zone.
- Connections 3×3 uses nine items, three groups of three, yellow/blue/purple categories, and the same up-to-four-mistake allowance.
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