Connections asks a simple question that turns out to be fiendish: which four of these sixteen words belong together, and why? There are four groups in every grid, each with one hidden link, and you submit them one at a time. Four wrong submissions and the round is over, with the remaining groups revealed for you to groan at.
The New York Times launched it in beta in June 2023, and it has since become one of the most played puzzles in its collection. Puzzles are edited by Wyna Liu, and the quality of that editing is the reason Connections sits so high on our list. These grids are clearly made by a person with a sense of humour, not churned out by a machine.
Yellow to purple, and why the order matters
Each group is colour-coded by difficulty. Yellow is the most straightforward, then green, then blue, and purple is the one designed to make you doubt yourself. You do not see the colours until you have solved a group, so the skill lies in recognising which link is the gentle one and clearing it first to thin the board.
In our two weeks, the most reliable approach was to look for the purple group early without submitting it. Purple categories often lean on wordplay, such as hidden words, sounds or letters added to the front, and spotting one shrinks the field for everything else. Two of us got into the habit of naming all four groups aloud before touching the grid at all.
The art of the deliberate red herring
Every good grid contains at least one word that fits two or even three plausible groups. That is not sloppiness; it is the whole design. A board might offer five types of fish when only four belong in the fish group, and the fifth is quietly doing duty in a category about something else entirely. The moment you realise this is the game’s best feeling.
Because mistakes are capped at four, those red herrings carry real weight. We logged our errors and found that nearly all of them came from rushing a group of five candidates rather than pausing to ask which one belonged elsewhere. Slowing down by thirty seconds was worth more than any clever trick.
Where knowledge ends and wordplay begins
Some categories lean on general knowledge, and here the game can feel a little American for British players. A group of US sports teams or brands we rarely see on this side of the Atlantic occasionally left one of us stranded. It happened only a couple of times across our fortnight, and the wordplay groups more than make up for it.
Those wordplay groups are where Connections earns its top score for the aha moment. Homophones, palindromes and words hiding inside other words turn up regularly, and the instant you see the trick the whole board rearranges itself in your head. It is the closest thing in this list to a really good cryptic clue.
Coloured rows, a sports edition and the one-grid ceiling
Like Wordle, Connections lets you share a coloured grid of your attempts without revealing the words. A clean row of four colours is a little badge of honour; a jumble of mismatched squares tells its own funny story. Our group chat now treats a perfect purple-first solve as a minor event.
The Times has also launched a sports-themed edition, which some of us enjoyed and others found too reliant on knowledge we lacked. The main grid is still a single daily puzzle, so once you are done, you are done. That keeps each one special, but it is the reason the game scores modestly on life beyond today’s grid.
A Monday-to-Sunday starter plan for Connections
- Before tapping anything, read all sixteen words twice and say every possible group you can see out loud.
- Look for the trickiest-looking link first, but clear the most obvious group first to shrink the board.
- When five words seem to fit a group, ask which one could secretly belong to another category.
- Keep a short note of the purple categories you meet; the same kinds of wordplay come back often.
- Share your coloured grid with a friend at the end of the week and compare which groups tripped you up.
Green tiles for it
- The editing is sharp, witty and plainly done by a person who enjoys language.
- Red herrings are fair: always tough, never arbitrary once you see the link.
- Purple groups deliver the best aha moments in any daily puzzle we play.
- Four mistakes is a generous margin that still makes every submission feel weighty.
Grey tiles against it
- American trivia categories can strand British players now and then.
- Only one main grid a day, so fast solvers are left wanting more.
- A lucky early guess can flatten an otherwise excellent puzzle.
Whose breakfast table Connections belongs on
Connections is for people who love the connecting wall more than the buzzer round, who enjoy puns and who do not mind being fooled as long as the trick is clever. If you would rather reason about meanings than letters, start here.
Where Connections lands after a fortnight of mornings
No game in our line-up shows more craft than Connections. The grids are thoughtfully edited, the red herrings are wickedly fair and the purple categories produce genuine laughter at the breakfast table. It loses a little ground on replay and on the odd trivia group from across the Atlantic, but as a single daily puzzle it is close to perfect. A firm second place, and some of us would argue first.
