What is Connections?
Connections is the New York Times daily word puzzle that asks you to find four hidden categories within sixteen words. Each category contains exactly four words that share a common thread. You submit groups of four: a correct set locks in and reveals its category name, while an incorrect guess costs you one of four allowed mistakes. Each solved group receives a color—Yellow, Green, Blue, or Purple—that indicates its difficulty level. The challenge lies not in spelling or vocabulary but in choosing the intended meaning when words fit multiple categories. The New York Times publishes one dated puzzle daily on web browsers, iOS, and Android.
How to play Connections
- Open the daily Connections puzzle.
- Look for a specific link shared by several words.
- Choose the four words you feel most certain about. A wrong submission uses one of your four mistakes.
- Submit the group, then reconsider the words left based on the result.
- Find all four groups before you use up your mistakes.
Reading the feedback
A correct submission locks the four words in place and names their shared category. An incorrect submission spends one mistake; the puzzle ends when all four are used. Each group receives a difficulty color: Yellow is easiest, followed by Green, Blue, and Purple. After completing or losing the puzzle, the results page displays statistics including completed puzzles, win rate, current and maximum streaks, perfect puzzles, and a mistake histogram.
Tips for solving
Name the exact relationship before submitting. A broad resemblance is not necessarily the intended connection. Keep a candidate group provisional until all four members are mutually consistent.
Start with the group you can name precisely in a single phrase. If you can describe a category only vaguely, it is probably not the intended group. When a word seems to fit two categories, set it aside until the groups you can confirm show where it belongs.
Use a guess only when you can explain why all four words belong together. Four wrong submissions end the board, so accuracy matters more than speed.
Common questions
The goal is to group words that share a common thread. A new puzzle is published each day. You get four mistakes, and each wrong submission uses one. No account is required to play the daily puzzle. The game is available in web browsers and on iOS and Android. The colors show difficulty: Yellow is easiest, followed by Green, Blue, and Purple.