NYT Connections Strategy: How to Solve It Every Day
To solve Connections consistently, build all four groups before you submit any, start with the group you are most certain of, and save the wordplay group for last. Connections looks deceptively simple. Sixteen words, four groups, sort them out. Then you notice that several words seem to belong to more than one group, your obvious answer turns out to be a trap, and your four mistakes vanish faster than you expected. The puzzle is designed to mislead you, and beating it consistently is about method, not vocabulary. Here is a repeatable way to approach it.
What Is Connections?
Connections is a daily puzzle from The New York Times. You are given a grid of sixteen words and must divide them into four groups of four. Each group shares a hidden link, which might be a category, a theme, or a piece of wordplay. You submit one group of four at a time, and you are allowed four mistakes before the game ends and reveals the answers.
The limited number of mistakes is the whole challenge. With unlimited guesses anyone could brute force it. With only four wrong tries, every submission has to count, and that turns the game into an exercise in discipline as much as cleverness.
How Do the Four Categories Work?
The four groups are colour coded by difficulty, and understanding that scale helps you plan your attack.
| Colour | Difficulty | Typical kind of link |
|---|---|---|
| Yellow | Easiest | A straightforward, obvious category |
| Green | Medium | A clear theme with a slight twist |
| Blue | Harder | A more specific or less obvious link |
| Purple | Hardest | Wordplay, hidden words, or phrase completion |
The purple group is where the puzzle hides its cleverest idea. Rather than a plain category, it often relies on a trick, such as words that each contain a hidden smaller word, words that sound like something else, or words that complete a common phrase. Knowing this in advance means you stop expecting purple to be a simple theme and start looking for the gimmick.
Love daily word puzzles? See what the data says about Wordle answer patterns and sharpen your other daily solve too.
A Method That Works
The single most useful habit is to resist your first instinct. The puzzle is built so that the obvious grouping is often wrong, with one or two words swapped out for tempting decoys. A calm, ordered approach beats a quick guess.
1. Find the words that clearly belong together. Scan for a group you feel strongly about, but do not submit yet. Hold it in mind as a working theory.
2. Look for overlap. Check whether any word in your confident group could also fit another category. These deliberate overlaps are the heart of the puzzle. If a word is ambiguous, it may belong to a different group than you assumed.
3. Build all four groups before submitting any. When you can account for every one of the sixteen words in exactly one group, your confidence in each is far higher. Often the fourth group reveals itself by elimination and corrects a mistake you were about to make.
4. Submit your safest group first. Start with the group that has no plausible alternative members. Each correct submission removes four words and makes the rest clearer.
Tips for Tricky Groupings
When the grid resists you, a few specific moves help.
Count the candidates. If you can think of five or six words that fit one category, the puzzle is using extras as decoys. The correct four are the ones that do not fit anywhere else, so solve the other groups first to see which candidates get pulled away.
Hunt for the wordplay group. If three groups make sense as plain categories but four words are left over with no obvious theme, the leftovers are almost certainly the wordplay group. Look at them letter by letter for hidden words, homophones, or a shared phrase.
Watch for a category within a category. A common trick is a group like types of something where one tempting word is a more general example that belongs elsewhere. The puzzle rewards the more specific reading.
What Are the Common Traps to Avoid?
Most failed Connections games come down to the same handful of mistakes. Knowing them is half the defense.
- Submitting too early. Guessing before you have placed all sixteen words is the leading cause of wasted mistakes.
- Falling for the obvious group. The clearest-looking category often contains one decoy that actually belongs to a harder group.
- Ignoring the purple gimmick. Treating the hardest group as a plain theme leads you to force the wrong four together.
- Forgetting elimination. Once three groups are solved, the last four words form the final group automatically, so never burn a mistake on it.
Approach the grid patiently, account for every word before you commit, and save the wordplay group for last. Do that consistently and the daily Connections becomes far less of a gamble and much more of a solve.
Want more daily puzzle help? Browse our full collection of word game guides for Wordle, Scrabble, and more.
This article is an independent strategy guide. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by The New York Times, the publisher of Connections.