Connections

📝 Words nytimes.com/games/connections

🎯 What is Connections?

Connections is the daily word-grouping game from the New York Times. Each day the puzzle drops a 4×4 grid of sixteen words and asks you to find four hidden groups of four words that share something in common. It's part of the NYT Games suite alongside Wordle and Strands, and the same answer goes out to every player worldwide at midnight local time.

The categories can be anything from "things that are red" to "words that can follow X" to "types of pasta" to more abstract connections like "Shakespeare plays" or "words with a silent letter." Difficulty scales across the four groups — one is usually easy, one is medium, one is tricky, and one is genuinely hard.

💡 How to Play Connections

Open nytimes.com/games/connections and look at today's 4×4 grid of sixteen words.
Look for the obvious group — usually a category that jumps out at a glance (a color, an animal, a type of food).
Click four words that you think belong together. Selected words highlight in your group's color.
Press Submit to lock in your guess. A correct group disappears from the grid; a wrong group counts as one of your four mistakes.
Watch the yellow one-away warning. If you submit a group that's just one word off from a real group, Connections lets you know.
Use the Shuffle button to reorder the grid if you've been staring at it too long. Sometimes a fresh layout makes a category click.
Solve all four groups without running out of mistakes. A new puzzle drops at midnight local time and the previous day's archive stays free for casual replay.