When it comes to Daily Word Puzzle Games, finding the sweet spot between casual and challenging gets quite tricky. The New York Times Connection game does it superbly, with the answers always making us feel like we missed the most obvious thing in hindsight! If you want to know more about Connections, we got you covered.
The editing of NYT Connections is the work of Wyna Liu, and the game itself is, as explained by the New York Times, a daily game about finding common threads between words. Players must select four groups of four words without making more than four mistakes.
Unlike most other word games, such as crosswords, or those based on spelling, Connections is focused on, as the name suggests, finding the connections between the words and placing them in a category. And these connections can be anything, from auditory to contextual!
How to Play NYT Connections
The New York Times Connections offers players a word grid of four times four. These words then must be grouped together, sharing a common thread.
However, it's easier said than done! After all, while it may seem obvious that a single category contains the days of the week, if there are more than four, one of them is part of another, connected to it contextually. For example, Wednesday would not be connected to the days of the week, but the Addams Family category!
With four lifelines possible, picking at random is also off the table, forcing players to engage their thinking to the maximum, and categorize the words carefully! Once you’ve selected your words, you need to click to select each word and press submit. If your guess is correct, it will change color!
Colors Explained
Each NYT Connections Daily Word game is split into four categories, corresponding to four distinct colors.
- Yellow - Straightforward and easy
- Green - Potentially unfamiliar terms or trivia
- Blue - Potentially unfamiliar terms or trivia
- Purple - Trickiest category to guess
When guessing a category correctly, the selected words will light up in one of these colors, denoting which category you've chosen correctly!
NYT Connections Tips and Tricks
Solving the daily NYT Connections Word Puzzles consistently is not something that is easy to accomplish, as it is with other games. The nature of the game does not allow it, after all! Still, there are a few ways to give yourself a hand.
Play Top to Bottom
There is a reason why Connections is organized in such a way that each color corresponds to a specific difficulty. With that in mind, try identifying the most obvious category first, to make it easier on yourself, having less words to work with for the more difficult ones.
Use the Mistakes Wisely
The perfect game is, of course, always the goal when playing Connections, but there is a reason experienced game designers such as Heidi Erwin, gave players the option to commit four mistakes, not more or less.
The number of lifelines is perfect to test your hypothesis as to which common threads are correct, before making your move. Don't just rush into things, and take your time to pick apart all four possible categories to test out!
Use the Process of Elimination
After you've managed to identify some possibilities of categories, you'll often find yourself with more than four words fitting that entry. That is where the other categories fi the equation, and so do the mistakes as tests!
Use both, and try to utilize the process of elimination to cut down the words with double meanings away, to the four that could only fit that category and no other!
Ask For Help
Even the best of us fail at certain points, as very few people are walking dictionaries. And even if they were, with the way the game is set up, it still wouldn't always help.
So, don't be afraid to ask for help, and check out the Daily NYT Connections Clues and Answers we offer!
Where to Play NYT Connections?
As the name suggests, the NYT Connections game can be played at the New York Times Connections game index. The game updates daily, at midnight local time!