NYT Connections gives you sixteen words and asks you to sort them into four groups of four that share something in common. Each group has a difficulty level, shown by color once solved: yellow is easiest, green and blue are more challenging, and purple is usually the trickiest, often a wordplay or pun based category rather than a straightforward theme.
How a round of Connections works
You select four words you believe belong together and submit them. A correct guess reveals that group's category and color. A wrong guess costs you one of four mistakes, and using up all four ends the round with groups left unsolved.
Why the purple category is usually the hardest
Yellow and green groups tend to be fairly direct, things like synonyms or a shared category. Purple, and often blue, tend to hinge on wordplay: words that can all precede or follow the same word, homophones, or a shared letter pattern rather than a shared meaning. Spotting the trick usually means looking past the obvious meaning of a word entirely.
A general strategy for fewer mistakes
Start with the group you're most confident about, usually yellow, since locking in an easy win narrows the board for the harder ones. Watch for a word that seems to fit two different groups equally well; that overlap is often the puzzle's way of baiting a wrong guess, and it's frequently the key to spotting the purple category once you notice which word doesn't fit as cleanly as it first appeared.
Why we don't have a Connections solver
Unlike Wordle or a Scrabble rack, Connections isn't a letters-and-dictionary problem, it's a semantic and wordplay problem, grouping words by meaning, category, or pun. That's a fundamentally different kind of puzzle than the letter matching our tools are built for, so rather than build something that would just guess, we've focused on tools for the word games that our dictionary can actually help with.
Frequently asked questions
How many words are in a Connections puzzle?
Sixteen, sorted into four hidden groups of four.
What do the colors in Connections mean?
Each group has a difficulty level revealed once solved: yellow is typically the easiest, green and blue are moderate, and purple is usually the hardest, often built around wordplay rather than a direct shared meaning.
How many mistakes am I allowed in Connections?
Four. Using up all four before finishing ends the round with any remaining groups unsolved.
What's a good starting strategy for Connections?
Lock in the group you're most confident about first, usually the yellow one, since solving it narrows the board and makes the remaining, harder groups easier to isolate.
Why does a word sometimes seem to fit two groups?
That overlap is usually intentional, meant to tempt an incorrect guess. It's often worth extra scrutiny, since the word that doesn't fit as cleanly as it first seems is frequently part of the trickier purple category.
Do you have a Connections solver?
No, and we don't plan to fake one. Connections is a semantic and wordplay puzzle, not a letters-against-a-dictionary puzzle, which is a genuinely different problem than what our tools are built to solve.
Is Connections affiliated with this site?
No. Connections is a puzzle from The New York Times Company, and this is independent, unaffiliated commentary.
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