What Is the NYT's Connections Game and How Do You Play It? (2024)

The New York Times' Connections game is, like Wordle before it, an online game that a lot of people play every day. But what is Connections? How do you play Connections? And what do you need to know about Connections before you dive in?

What Is the New York Times' Connections Game?

Connections is a daily logic puzzle created and curated by the New York Times. It's available to play online for free by visiting the Connections website on desktop or mobile. Or you can play it on the New York Times Games app, which is home to all the publication's various games.

The New York Times has offered a crossword since 1942. But in more recent years, the NYT has introduced a broader range of games. These include Spelling Bee, Letter Boxed, Tiles, Vertex, and Wordle. The latter being a phenomenon that spawned countless Wordle alternatives and spin-offs.

In 2023, the New York Times launched Connections. The game has since grown in popularity due to being simple to play but difficult to master. The basic rules are simple enough for anyone to understand, but actually succeeding at the game day-in, day-out can be a tough ask.

How to Play the NYT's Connections Game

To play Connections, first visit the Connections website or open the New York Times Games app if you have it installed.

Click Play, and after the splash screen that tells you how to play Connections, you'll be faced with a wall of 16 words.

The idea of the game is to place these 16 words into groups of four based on a connection they share with each other. I say "a" connection, because some words share multiple similarities. You need to find the correct one in each case.

Look for the similarities and differences between the words—and try to find the first group of four. Once you are confident you have identified it, select each one on the screen, and hit Submit. If you change your mind after selecting four, you can click it again to deselect it or click the Deselect all button underneath the puzzle to wipe the slate clean.

If your grouping is correct, the words will move to the top of the game and that bar will change color. The groups are given colors to indicate their difficulty level, with green at the top; followed by yellow, blue, and purple in that order. But you don't need to get them in that order—you just need to get them, period.

If you get a grouping wrong at any point, the words will be automatically deselected and you'll lose one of your four lives. The NYT refers to these as mistakes and you can see how many mistakes you have remaining underneath the puzzle.

Continue guessing the groupings until you either fill out the whole board and complete the Connections puzzle for that day or you run out of lives. Either way, you then have to wait until midnight in your local timezone before the next puzzle goes live.

To share your results, whether to celebrate success or to admit failure, click the Share Your Results button that pops up when you finish the game. Sharing your results is a way of engaging in some friendly competition with others who also play Connections on a daily basis.

On desktop, this copies your results to the clipboard. You can then paste them into an email or on your favorite social media site. On mobile, this also copies your results to the clipboard for pasting. However, you'll also be given a number of ways to share it directly depending on what apps you have installed on your device.

Your Connections results for that day are shared as colored squares. This ensures that you're not spoiling the game for anyone else by revealing the words or groups that they need to end up in.

If Connections isn't your thing, there are plenty of other two-player mobile games to play with friends or strangers.

Things You Need to Know About Connections Before You Play

Before you start playing Connections, there are a few things you should understand:

• There's a new Connections game every day. This is comforting given that there's a chance you'll fail to solve it on some days. If you do fail, just wait for it to refresh and try again.
• A new Connections is released at midnight in your timezone. If you want to avoid spoilers/seeing answers, avoid searching for Connections before you've played that day.
• You will find some days more difficult than others. Your chance of success or failure depends on the choice of words and your knowledge of the subjects.
• You can play the same Connections puzzle more than once. Unless you're logged into the NYT's Games App, your attempt is only saved locally. This means that you can try again either in an incognito window on your web browser or on another device.
• Part of the fun is sharing your score with other people. It's really easy to share your score with others, and if they share theirs too, you can have some friendly competition.
• The colors are only revealed after you have guessed correctly. But you may find that you solve the purple or blue lines (that are meant to be the most difficult) first.
• Each puzzle only has one solution, and you have to get it exactly right to progress. There are words that could fit into multiple categories, but that's intentional.
• Connections is curated by editors using the Oxford English Dictionary. However, as the New York Times is a US publication, there's a US bias in the subjects chosen.
• Every Connections puzzle is being archived. An unofficial Connections archive allows you to play the puzzles you may have missed when they were live on the New York Times website.

Connections has become one of several games I play daily. Alongside Wordle and The Mini crossword, it offers both a fun diversion and some friendly competition with my partner. Unfortunately, she generally beats me at all of the above.