NYT Connections: Tips and tricks to solve the tricky everyday puzzle

On October 24, 2024By Yukito

The New York Times’ Connections game is one of the most challenging of the many daily puzzles available online.

It is the second most played game after Wordle and has been very popular since its release on June 12, 2023.

But it doesn’t have to be that difficult. If you’re just starting out or need a refresher, here’s how to play Connections with tips on how to beat the game, plus today’s answers.

In the Connections word game, players must identify topics among words. Given 16 words, players must identify groups of four objects that share a common feature.

Each group is given a color (purple, blue, green or yellow), with purple being the hardest and yellow being the easiest.

With terms that can be classified into more than one category, each problem has one solution and is designed to be challenging. Editors use the Oxford Dictionary to select words and categories.

The Connections game refreshes every day at midnight.

Connections is currently free to play on all platforms, so there is no need to register or log in.

It’s a difficult word game compared to other games like Wordle, but luckily the New York Times has put together a list of strategies you can use to succeed.

If you pay attention, there are plenty of clues in the game itself.

The site also features the Connections Companion app, where you can find clues for the day’s puzzle and share your result with the Connector community in the comments.

If you are completely lost, it is advisable to guess. The game will display the prompt “Off!” if you are missing one term in a specific category. To determine which term doesn’t fit with the others, keep these guesses in mind.

Complicated rhymes, homophones, anagrams, palindromes, unmarked sentences to complete, and entire wildcards can be found in the hardest category, purple.

Morgan Payne, who often solves Connections for her TikTok fans, stated, “I’m going to try to look at patterns of what Connections has done in the past.”

Word and letter patterns, pop culture clues (such as music and movie titles), and phrases to fill in are just some of the common categories Payne recognizes from previous experience.

Puzzle creator Wyna Liu advises watching out for overlaps and “eliminating options and clearing the board as much as possible.”

The boards are compiled by Liu, then tested and edited by senior puzzle editor Joel Fagliano. According to Fagliano, he starts each solution by looking for phrases that have only one definition. While a word like “train” can mean many different things, “metaverse” can only mean one thing.

Reddit is also another good source of tips and tricks.

In fact, one user shared his entire strategy online. The most obvious category is likely to be trap, according to a Reddit user who states that “it’s important to look at both the structure of the word and its meaning. Linguistic categories are usually not easy to spot.

“If you get stuck, take a word and make sentences with it. Try to think of as many contexts as possible in which it might fit. For example, “pine” could fit into categories such as trees, people named Chris, words that mean falling in love with someone, or words ending with -apple, right above my head.

“Use the four errors allowed to your advantage. Discovering that three words definitely fall into a given category is more helpful than not knowing them at all. Finally, if the blend button doesn’t help, I recommend coming back to it a few hours later. I usually give myself 10 minutes and if I don’t get it, I come back to it later and in most cases I can then solve the problem.”

Responses to Connections for October 24

Yellow group: composition (bill, program, schedule, slate)
Green Group: NYT Deals (Audio, Cooking, Games, News)
Blue group: things made by folding paper (plane, crane, fan, fairy)
Purple group: French words (adieu, belle, pain, temps)