What Connections Is#
Connections deals sixteen words that sort into four hidden groups of four. Find a group, submit it, repeat; four wrong submissions end the game. Difficulty is colour-coded — yellow easiest, then green, blue, and purple, where purple is traditionally the wordplay-or-trick category.
It launched in beta in June 2023 under New York Times puzzle editor Wyna Liu and quickly became the paper's second-most-played game, behind only Wordle — remarkable for a game the Times built in-house rather than bought.
How to Play#
The board is built around red herrings: five words will look like they fit a group that only takes four. Never submit the first obvious category — find the trap word by working out which candidate also fits somewhere else. Purple usually hides a pattern about the words themselves (prefixes, homophones, things that precede another word), so if four words feel unrelated, look at their letters instead of their meanings.
The Franchise#
A Sports Edition built with The Athletic entered beta in September 2024 and launched fully in February 2025, timed to the Super Bowl. Both editions live in the NYT Games app alongside Wordle, Strands, and the crosswords.
Our rating:
Frequently Asked Questions#
Is NYT Connections free?
The daily puzzle plays free on the web and in the NYT Games app. Older puzzles and some companion features sit with NYT Games subscriptions.
What do the colours mean in Connections?
Difficulty: yellow is the easiest group, then green, blue, and purple — the hardest, and usually the one built on wordplay rather than meaning.
More Games Like NYT Connections#
Wordle without the once-a-day limit: pick any word length from four to eleven letters and play as many rounds as you like.
No coloured tiles: each guess only narrows where the target sits alphabetically between your words.
Six words baked into a waffle-shaped grid arrive pre-scrambled; you have 15 swaps to set them all straight, and five stars means a perfect solve.
Or browse all of them on our games like Wordle.
Daily Puzzles, Our Way
Play today's NerdleBuddy puzzle, or use the Classic Nerdle solver to choose a next guess from your tile feedback.