Connections · Guide
How to Play Connections — Full Guide
Everything about NYT Connections in one place: what it is, how to group the words, the purple wordplay trap, and the best solving order — plus where to grab today's answer.
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What Is Connections?
Connections is a daily game from The New York Times where you're given a 4×4 grid of sixteen words and have to sort them into four hidden groups of four. Each group shares a link — a category, a theme, or a piece of wordplay — and you get just four mistakes. The groups are colour-coded by difficulty: yellow is easiest, then green and blue, and purple is the trickiest. It rides the same daily habit as Wordle but rewards lateral thinking and pattern-spotting instead of spelling.
How to Play, Step by Step
Group the words
Pick the four words you think share a connection and submit. A correct group locks in with its colour; a wrong guess costs one of your four lives. The aim is all four groups before you run out.
Mind the overlaps
The puzzle is built on red herrings — words that look like they fit one group but belong to another. If five words seem to match a theme, one of them is a decoy planted for a different set.
Leave purple for last
Purple usually hides wordplay rather than a plain category. Solve the easier groups first; once twelve words are placed, the final four are forced even if you can't name their link.
Connections Strategy & the Purple Trap
The core skill is confidence management: with only four mistakes, you lock what you're sure of and use elimination for the rest. Start with your strongest group, usually yellow, and let each correct answer shrink the overlaps. Before submitting, check whether any word could belong elsewhere — the "obvious" pick is often the trap. The purple group is where streaks die, so read it for homophones, hidden words, or added letters rather than topic. Our daily page rates the difficulty and explains the purple trick behind every puzzle.
What Makes Connections Different
Most daily games test spelling or trivia. Connections tests whether you can spot hidden links and resist the obvious grouping. That's why our daily page shows the four colour-coded groups, rates the difficulty, and breaks down the purple wordplay — turning each puzzle into a quick lesson in lateral thinking.