NYT Connections has one intended solution for each daily puzzle, but overlapping word meanings can make a plausible guess risky. Here’s how to find spoiler-aware help, understand mistakes and stats, protect a streak, and share results without revealing more than you mean to.
How Connections works
Each puzzle presents 16 words. Find four groups of four words that share a theme. The New York Times assigns each group a color: yellow is the easiest and purple the trickiest. Because words can fit more than one plausible category, the puzzle can be challenging even though it has exactly one intended solution. The Times says its editors curate words and categories using the Oxford Dictionary. NYT Help: Connections
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The daily puzzle releases at midnight in your timezone. Connections is free to play without registering or signing in. The Times lists the Games app, NYTimes.com Connections, NYTimes.com/The Athletic, and the News app as places to play. Signing in with an NYT account is recommended if you want progress to carry across devices or platforms.
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Connections Companion
The NYT’s Connections Companion is a community page on the gameplay website where players can read hints, leave comments, and see a difficulty score. It is not available inside the Games or News app. Comments may contain spoilers, so finish the puzzle first or scroll carefully. NYT Help: Connections Companion
#1 Best Overall
Editorial hints
Daily guides from outside publishers offer another kind of help: they provide hints or answers outside the game interface. These are not an official graded hint system in Connections. For example, Tom’s Guide’s daily guide is an editorial source, not an in-game feature; its page may reveal more than you intend to see.
Reduce the risk of a wrong guess
Before submitting a set, name the category and check that all four words fit that same meaning. If a word seems to belong in more than one group, compare the proposed set with the remaining tiles before committing. This is a practical way to account for the overlap the Times says is intentional, not a special game rule.
Rank #2
How mistakes work
The NYT Help Center page describes the game’s structure but does not specify the number of mistakes allowed. Tom’s Guide reports that answers are revealed after four mistakes; treat that as secondary-source information rather than a rule confirmed by the Help Center. Tom’s Guide’s daily guide
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Complete the day’s puzzle before midnight in your local timezone for the solve to count toward your current streak. The NYT Help Center says finishing after midnight breaks the streak and starts a new one, and that a broken Connections streak cannot be reset. NYT Help: Connections Statistics
Connections statistics are linked to your NYT account. The stats page tracks puzzles completed, win rate, current streak, maximum streak, perfect puzzles, and a histogram of mistakes. The Help Center says its statistics cover puzzles played from June 15, 2024 onward.
What the archive and Connections Bot do
Archive
The archive is available to All Access and Games subscribers and includes puzzles going back to June 12, 2023. Archive play affects completed-puzzle, win-rate, perfect-puzzle, and mistake-distribution statistics, but not the current or maximum streak, which count only the puzzle released that day. A completed archive puzzle cannot be replayed. NYT Help: Connections Companion
Connections Bot
Connections Bot is available to All Access, Home Delivery, and Games subscribers. It provides difficulty comparisons, ratings, category information, common mistakes, and guess-by-guess analysis. The Help Center lists availability on the web and in the iOS and Android News apps. NYT Help: Connections Statistics
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How to share Connections results
After you submit your last guess, the statistics page appears with a Share Your Results option. Available sharing methods depend on your device. The copy button lets you paste the result into a text field, such as a social post, email, or text message. The NYT does not guarantee that every platform or copied format handles spoilers the same way, so preview the result and consider whether your audience has played yet. NYT Help: Connections Companion
Quick Recap
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