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A Reverse Rainbow in NYT Connections is a perfect solve in reverse difficulty order: submit the Purple group first, then Blue, Green, and Yellow, without an incorrect guess. It is an in-game badge associated with completing the puzzle in that sequence.
What does “Reverse Rainbow” mean in Connections?
Connections gives players 16 entries to sort into four groups of four. Each group is assigned a color that signals its intended difficulty, conventionally ordered from Yellow (easiest) through Green and Blue to Purple (hardest). A Reverse Rainbow turns that progression around: Purple → Blue → Green → Yellow. The badge requires getting every group right in that order, without a mistake.
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The color labels are a puzzle convention, not a guaranteed measure of how difficult a category will feel to you. A familiar wordplay pattern may make a group seem easy, while an apparently straightforward connection can be hard to spot. The distinction between neighboring colors can also be difficult to predict before solving.
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- Inspect all 16 entries before submitting. Connections is a sorting puzzle: find four sets of four entries that share a category.
- Write down all four likely categories. Do not commit to a group while you are still uncertain about the overall board; an incorrect guess breaks the mistake-free requirement.
- Estimate the color order. Identify the category that seems most likely to be Purple, then rank the other three as Blue, Green, and Yellow. Less direct relationships or wordplay may be clues, but they do not reliably reveal the assigned colors.
- Submit in reverse order. Choose the suspected Purple group first, followed by Blue, Green, and Yellow. If you are unsure whether two groups belong in one order or the other, pause rather than treating apparent ease as proof.
Pre-solving helps you plan, but it cannot guarantee the badge: the puzzle’s assigned difficulty may not match your personal sense of difficulty, and there is no foolproof way to infer every color from the category alone. The achievement is tied to the in-game puzzle; the available descriptions do not establish a special accessory or separate product needed to earn it.
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Where can you play Connections?
Connections is available on the New York Times website and in the NYT Games app. The gameplay overview describes the 16-entry, four-group format and the color difficulty convention: Forbes’ Connections overview. The Reverse Rainbow sequence and strategy are explained by Beebom Puzzle.
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