NYT Connections is a daily 16-word puzzle. Your task is to divide the words into four groups of four, with each group sharing a precise theme. The groups are shown in four difficulty colors: Yellow is intended to be easiest, followed by Green and Blue, while Purple is intended to be trickiest. The colors are guidance rather than a promise about how any individual puzzle will feel.
The challenge is that several words may appear to fit more than one group. You win by finding the puzzle’s one intended solution, not merely by finding four plausible sets. The most reliable approach is to identify a clean connection, test every member against the same rule, submit it, and then reassess the smaller grid.
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What NYT Connections asks you to do
The New York Times Help Center describes Connections as “a word game that challenges players to find themes between words.” Each daily board contains 16 words. Exactly four groups must be found, and every group contains exactly four items. When all four groups are correct, the puzzle is complete.
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The editors curate words and categories using the Oxford Dictionary. The carefully selected overlap is what makes the game difficult: a word that belongs in the intended group may also look reasonable beside words in another group. The board has one intended solution, so a group that is merely arguable is not enough.
How to play Connections step by step
1. Read all 16 words before committing
Start with a complete scan rather than solving from the first obvious pair. Look for repeated subjects, actions, objects, sounds, prefixes, suffixes and familiar phrases. Reading the entire grid helps you notice that a seemingly obvious word may be needed elsewhere.
At this stage, make mental or written clusters of possible relationships. Do not treat a pair or trio as proof. Connections requires four members, and the fourth word often determines whether the idea is real or a trap.
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2. Find a group with four clean members
Choose the candidate set whose members fit one precise description. “Things associated with travel” is usually too broad; “words that can follow air” or “types of fish” is more testable. A strong group has four natural members and no need for special pleading.
Ask whether the relationship is the same for every word. If three entries are physical objects but the fourth is a person loosely related to them, the set is probably weak. If one word needs a different spelling, pronunciation or definition from the others, pause before submitting.
3. Look for a tempting fifth word
Before submitting, search the remaining 12 words for a fifth item that appears to fit. A tempting extra word is an important warning: one of the four candidates may be a red herring, or the category may have been defined too broadly.
For example, if four words seem to be types of a general object but a fifth word also qualifies, narrow the rule. The intended category may depend on a specific phrase, a particular grammatical form or a specialized meaning. The correct group should leave the rest of the board more coherent, not less.
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4. Submit only a coherent group
Select four words and submit them when the connection survives the precision test. A correct submission removes those four words and leaves a 12-word grid. An incorrect submission consumes one of the puzzle’s allowed mistakes, so random guessing is costly.
After a correct group disappears, do not assume the original theory explains the remaining board. Re-read all 12 words. Removing one set often reveals a connection that was hidden by overlap.
5. Reassess the remainder after every success
Use the reduced grid as new evidence. A word that looked ambiguous among 16 entries may become obvious when only 12 remain. Repeat the same process: identify a candidate, test all four members against one rule, check for a fifth, and submit.
6. Switch from meaning to structure when necessary
If no semantic category is convincing, inspect word structure. Try common phrase completions, words that can follow or precede the same term, names, titles, initials, homophones, abbreviations and spelling features. Connections frequently rewards recognizing how a word is used rather than what it denotes by itself.
What the Yellow, Green, Blue and Purple colors mean
The four colors indicate the intended difficulty order supplied by The New York Times: Yellow is easiest, Green and Blue occupy the middle, and Purple is hardest. They are not labels for different rules, point values or puzzle modes. Every color still represents a group of four words.
| Color | Intended difficulty | Connection usually feels like | What can make it difficult |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yellow | Easiest | A direct, familiar relationship that many players can recognize quickly | Words from another group may create a misleading extra association |
| Green | Moderate | A reasonably familiar category that needs more deliberate checking | The wording may be less literal, or members may be distributed across several apparent themes |
| Blue | Moderately difficult | A relationship requiring more specific knowledge or a less obvious interpretation | Phrase structure, cultural references or an indirect link may conceal the set |
| Purple | Trickiest | Wordplay, an unusual sense, a specialized reference or a structural pattern | Several red herrings can make a plausible but incorrect category seem stronger |
The color order is a rough ranking, not a guarantee about your personal experience. A Purple group can be obvious to someone familiar with its subject, while a Yellow group can be difficult if its words are used as red herrings elsewhere. Difficulty also depends on the other three groups and on the solver’s vocabulary and cultural knowledge.
Why one word can seem to fit two groups
Overlap is intentional. The editors choose words that support multiple plausible readings so that the solution cannot be obtained by matching the first four related terms you notice. A word may have more than one definition, belong to a broad real-world category and complete a phrase, or share a spelling pattern with one group while sharing a meaning with another.
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When this happens, compare the competing groups by precision. Prefer the set in which all four words obey the same narrow rule. Then inspect the alternative: if it would leave five possible members, require an exception, or produce an incoherent remainder, it is probably the decoy.
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The one-solution rule is useful here. You do not need to prove that no other relationship exists in ordinary language; you need to identify the grouping that best matches the puzzle’s exact construction and leaves three internally consistent groups after removal.
A practical order for solving the board
- Inventory the grid. Read every word and note obvious common subjects, repeated forms and possible phrase links.
- Mark high-confidence candidates. Look for four members with a narrow, natural connection rather than collecting loose pairs.
- Challenge the candidate. Search for a fifth fitting word and identify any member that depends on a different interpretation.
- Submit the cleanest group. Use a guess only when the four entries share one precise relationship.
- Rebuild your hypotheses. With four words removed, examine the remaining grid from the beginning.
- Escalate to wordplay. If semantic categories fail, test prefixes, suffixes, phrase completions, names, titles, abbreviations and sound-based links.
- Reserve the most obscure possibility for last. The Purple group is intended to be the trickiest, so do not force an unfamiliar interpretation while a cleaner group remains available.
This order is a solving method derived from the game’s overlap and one-solution mechanics. It is not an official requirement that groups be solved in color order. You may discover Purple first or finish Yellow last.
Examples of connection types to test
Literal categories
These groups contain four members of the same recognizable class, such as kinds of fish, tools, foods or geographic features. Check that each item belongs to the class in the same ordinary sense and that the category is not so broad that a fifth word qualifies.
Shared beginnings or endings
A group may consist of words that begin with the same term, end with the same term or become familiar expressions when combined with it. The official examples include four words beginning with “FIRE.” The common element may appear before or after the displayed word.
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Say each candidate aloud with a possible partner. If all four create established phrases with the same word, that structural relationship may be stronger than a loose semantic connection. Verify that the phrase is natural and uses the same direction and grammatical form for every member.
Names, titles and cultural references
Proper names, fictional characters, works, brands, places or historical references can form a set. Such groups may require specialized knowledge, which is one reason they can feel harder than a literal category. Do not assume capitalization will always reveal the intended reading.
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Word form and sound
Look for abbreviations, initials, homophones, plurals, parts of speech and words that change meaning when pronounced differently. A structural group should use the same transformation for all four entries; one word should not depend on an unrelated pun.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Where and when to play
The daily puzzle releases at midnight in the player’s timezone. The New York Times lists these access points:
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- nytimes.com/games/connections
- The News app
- Sports Edition through New York Times and The Athletic platforms
Daily Connections is free to play without registration. Signing in preserves progress across devices, which is useful if you begin on a phone and finish on a computer. The release time is local to the player, so two people in different timezones may receive the new puzzle at different moments.
Statistics, streaks and mistakes
The statistics page records several measures of your play:
- Puzzles completed
- Win rate
- Current streak
- Maximum streak
- Perfect puzzles
- A histogram showing puzzles solved with zero, one, two, three or four mistakes
A puzzle must be solved before local midnight to count toward the current streak. Once a streak is broken, it cannot be reset. The mistake histogram is separate from the streak: it shows how many puzzles you solved with each number of mistakes, while the streak measures consecutive daily completion.
Because the game permits several plausible groupings, an incorrect submission is informative as well as costly. Treat it as evidence that your category definition or one of its members needs rechecking. Avoid spending remaining guesses on tiny variations of the same disproven theory.
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Who can use the archive
The Connections archive is available to All Access and Games subscribers. For eligible subscribers, it reaches back to June 12, 2023. This lets you practice older boards instead of waiting for the next daily release.
How archived games affect statistics
Archived puzzles count toward completed-puzzle totals, win rate, perfect-puzzle totals and the distribution of mistakes. They do not change your current streak or maximum streak. Solving an older board is therefore useful practice and contributes to several statistics, but it cannot repair or extend a daily streak.
What Connections Bot can show
Connections Bot is available to eligible subscribers and can provide comparative difficulty, personal ratings, category-finding order, common mistakes and guess-by-guess analysis. These reports are most useful after you finish: they explain why a group was accepted, where your guesses diverged from the intended path and how your performance compares with your own history.
Troubleshooting common solving problems
“I have three words, but no fourth.”
Do not submit a three-word theory. Search for a fourth member that follows exactly the same rule, then check whether a fifth word also qualifies. If no fourth word appears, the initial three may share only a broad association or may belong to different groups.
“I can make five words fit.”
Narrow the category. Ask whether one word uses a different definition, whether the connection depends on a particular phrase rather than a general topic, or whether one candidate is a deliberate red herring. The intended set should identify four members without an exception.
“Two groups both look convincing.”
Compare the leftovers each group would create. The better group is the one with the more exact relationship and a remainder that supports three complete groups. A category that sounds broad but leaves an impossible final set is not the intended solution.
“Everything seems unrelated.”
Change the level at which you are reading. Move from meanings to word forms, phrase completions, names, titles, abbreviations and sounds. Also remove any group you can prove, because the remaining words may expose a pattern that was invisible in the full grid.
“The color does not match my experience.”
That is normal. Colors describe intended ordering, not an individual difficulty score. Your familiarity with a subject, language, reference or wordplay device can make a Purple group easier than a Yellow one.
How to improve over time
After each puzzle, review the reason for every guess rather than only whether you won. Note whether your error came from a broad category, a missed phrase, an unfamiliar reference or failure to test a fifth candidate. This turns the game into practice across several skills: vocabulary, pattern recognition, cultural recall and resistance to confirmation bias.
Use the archive, when available to your subscription, to isolate one skill at a time. You might first attempt boards without looking at statistics, then study your mistake distribution and Connections Bot analysis afterward. The goal is not to memorize a preferred color order; it is to become better at distinguishing a precise four-word relationship from an attractive but incomplete association.
Bottom line
Play Connections by dividing 16 words into four exact groups of four. Start with the clearest relationship, test it against a possible fifth member, submit only when all four words obey the same rule, and use the reduced grid to find the next set. Yellow, Green, Blue and Purple indicate intended difficulty from easiest to trickiest, but overlap and personal knowledge determine how hard any individual category feels.
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