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NYT Connections asks you to divide 16 words into four groups of four. A puzzle counts as a win when you finish with fewer than four mistakes—that is, with zero, one, two, or three incorrect submissions. The daily puzzle appears at midnight in your local time zone, and a streak continues only when you complete that day’s puzzle before your local midnight.
This FAQ explains the rules, color difficulty, hints, “one away” terminology, statistics, archive behavior, subscriptions, and the practical ways to protect a streak without giving away answers.
What is NYT Connections?
Connections is a daily word-classification game from The New York Times. You see a 4-by-4 set of 16 words and must select four sets of four words that share a connection. The connection might be a meaning, phrase, word that follows or precedes another word, category of objects, or another relationship chosen by the puzzle editor.
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The New York Times Help Center says that every puzzle has exactly one solution. It also deliberately includes words that can appear to fit more than one category. That overlap is the central challenge: a tempting group may be valid on its own but still be wrong because one word belongs to the puzzle’s intended group elsewhere.
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The game is available free on the NYT Games app, the NYT Connections webpage, nytimes.com/theathletic, and the NYT News app. The official help article says registration or sign-in is not required to play. Signing in is recommended if you want progress and statistics to follow you between devices.
How the four Connections colors work
After you solve a group, Connections identifies it by a color. The colors indicate the intended difficulty order, not the quality of your answer.
| Color | Relative difficulty | What to expect |
|---|---|---|
| Yellow | Easiest | The most direct or familiar connection in that puzzle. |
| Green | Moderate | A connection that usually requires more interpretation than yellow. |
| Blue | Hard | A less obvious relationship or a category with stronger distractors. |
| Purple | Trickiest | Often a wordplay, spelling, phrase, or otherwise indirect connection. |
The color order is a design guide, not a required solving order. You can find purple first or submit a group that turns out to be any color.
How many mistakes can you make in NYT Connections?
NYT’s official win-rate definition is completing a puzzle in under four mistakes. In practical terms, a result with zero, one, two, or three incorrect submissions is counted as a win. The official statistics display a mistake histogram from zero through four mistakes.
Do not treat the win-rate definition as a promise about the exact wording or layout of the game-over screen. It is the rule NYT uses for the win statistic. A wrong submission is costly even when you still have attempts left, so avoid guessing when you can test a stronger theory first.
What counts as a mistake?
When you submit four words that do not form one of the puzzle’s intended groups, that submission is an incorrect guess. A correct group is removed and its color is revealed. Because the puzzle is designed with overlapping possibilities, a group that looks plausible may be the trap rather than the answer.
What time does NYT Connections reset?
The daily puzzle releases at midnight in the player’s time zone. Your local calendar day therefore determines when a new puzzle becomes available and when the previous day’s streak deadline arrives.
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How the streak deadline works
A current streak counts consecutive daily wins completed before your local midnight. Solving yesterday’s puzzle after midnight does not preserve yesterday’s streak, even if the puzzle remains accessible. The NYT Help Center says a broken Connections streak cannot be reset.
- Open the puzzle during your local day.
- Complete it with fewer than four mistakes before your local midnight.
- Confirm the result while you are still on that local calendar day.
- Start the next daily puzzle after the next midnight to continue the sequence.
If you travel or use devices set to different time zones, rely on the time zone governing the game session rather than assuming every device changes at the same moment. The official rule is expressed in terms of the player’s time zone; NYT does not publish a country-by-country availability matrix in its help article.
Does the Connections archive affect your streak?
No. Archive puzzles do not change your current streak or maximum streak. They are separate from the consecutive-daily-puzzle calculation.
The archive reaches back to June 12, 2023 and is available to All Access and Games subscribers. Solving an archived puzzle can still update several statistics:
- Completed-puzzle count
- Overall win rate
- Perfect-puzzle count
- Mistake-distribution histogram
Those updates let subscribers practice older puzzles and add to performance records without retroactively repairing a missed daily puzzle. If preserving a current streak matters, finish the current day’s puzzle before local midnight; an archive solve cannot substitute for it.
Does NYT Connections have hints?
There are two different help routes, and they serve different purposes. The official Help Center documents Connections Companion as a community forum for hints, comments, and difficulty scores. The forum is readable by anyone, but NYT warns that comments may contain spoilers.
Using Connections Companion without spoiling the puzzle
- Try the puzzle first and record your candidate groups.
- Open only the hint or difficulty information you need.
- Scroll carefully: a later comment may reveal a category or the complete solution.
- Leave the page as soon as you have enough guidance to continue.
Companion is community discussion, not an official guarantee that a hint is phrased in a particular way or that every comment is spoiler-free.
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What Connections Bot provides
Connections Bot is available to All Access, Home Delivery, and Games subscribers. It analyzes your performance rather than being documented as an unrestricted answer-reveal tool. Its reported features include:
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- A skill score
- A solution-uniqueness rating
- Category difficulty and order
- Common mistakes with AI-generated descriptions
- Guess-by-guess analysis
Choose Companion when you want community hints or discussion. Choose Bot when you want a personal performance breakdown and are eligible for the relevant subscription. Neither option changes the official under-four-mistakes win rule.
What does “one away” mean in Connections?
“One away” is commonly used by players to describe a proposed group in which three selected words appear to belong together and one word is the likely mismatch. However, the official NYT help material does not establish a current, universal in-game hint with that exact behavior.
A 2025 Association for Computational Linguistics paper used a “one away” condition in its experimental setup. That is a research condition, not proof that the live NYT game always supplies a one-away message. Treat the phrase as community or research terminology unless the current interface explicitly displays it.
How to solve a puzzle while limiting mistakes
1. Scan all 16 words before selecting anything
Look for obvious shared nouns, names, verbs, prefixes, suffixes, abbreviations, and phrases. Do not lock in the first four words that seem related. The puzzle intentionally includes overlaps, so a broad first impression is useful only as a list of candidates.
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A strong link is specific and repeatable: each word fits the same definition or the same phrase pattern. A loose link depends on a broad idea such as “things that are blue” or “words associated with travel.” Prefer the group whose relationship can be stated precisely.
3. Test the remaining 12 words
Before submitting, remove the proposed four mentally and inspect what remains. A valid category should leave a coherent path to three other groups. If your selection makes the remaining board chaotic, one of the four may be a deliberate decoy.
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4. Use the interface’s confirmation deliberately
Submit only four words at a time. If you are uncertain, keep candidates on the board and search for a stronger group elsewhere. Preserving guesses is especially important when you already have three mistakes, because one more incorrect submission would take you outside the official win threshold.
5. Revisit the hardest color last
Once a yellow or green group is removed, the remaining words often reveal the intended wordplay or phrase pattern. Purple is labeled the trickiest category, but nothing requires you to solve colors in that order.
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What statistics does Connections track?
For puzzles associated with your account, NYT statistics can show your completed puzzles, win rate, perfect puzzles, mistake distribution, current streak, and maximum streak. The official help information distinguishes streak statistics from archive effects: archive solves update performance totals and distributions but not current or maximum streaks.
A “perfect” result is a separate statistic from merely winning. The official material confirms that perfect-puzzle totals exist, but the win definition remains the under-four-mistakes threshold. Do not assume that every win is perfect.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What does research say about solving accuracy?
A 2025 Association for Computational Linguistics paper, titled NYT-Connections: A Deceptively Simple Text Classification Task that Stumps System-1 Thinkers, evaluated 100 puzzles from a dataset covering daily games between June 12, 2023 and June 3, 2024. In that controlled study, the authors reported 56% human accuracy without hints and 60.67% with full hints.
Those figures describe the paper’s participants, puzzle sample, and experimental configurations. They are not a population-wide NYT solve rate, not a guarantee for an individual player, and not evidence that every hint improves every result. NYT’s official help article supplies the game rules and product features but does not publish a population-level success statistic.
Can you play Connections for free?
The official access description says Connections is free to play and does not require registration or sign-in. Signing in is still useful for retaining progress across devices and associating results with personal statistics.
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Some related features are restricted. The archive is available to All Access and Games subscribers, while Connections Bot is available to All Access, Home Delivery, and Games subscribers. The free daily game, archive access, and Bot eligibility should therefore be treated as separate questions rather than one universal access rule.
Common streak and hint problems
“I solved an old puzzle, but my streak did not increase.”
That is expected. Archive solves affect completed-puzzle and performance statistics, not current or maximum streaks.
“I solved after midnight and lost my streak.”
The streak deadline is local midnight. The Help Center says a broken streak cannot be reset, so completing the previous puzzle after that deadline does not restore it.
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Connections Companion comments may contain spoilers. For spoiler control, solve before opening the forum, use only the difficulty or hint information you need, and avoid scrolling through unrestricted discussion.
“The words fit two groups.”
That ambiguity is intentional. NYT says each puzzle has one solution while also warning that words may fit multiple categories. Compare the exactness of each category and inspect the four words left behind before submitting.
“My results disappeared on another device.”
Playing without an account can leave progress local to the device or session. Sign in to retain progress across devices, as recommended in the official access guidance.
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