Companion For Hints and Answers
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This is the NYTSolvers page for NYT Connections. Here you will find three levels of daily help, from a small nudge to the full answer key, along with clear information about how the puzzle works, what the four difficulty colors mean, and how to get better at it over time. Whether you are stuck on one tricky purple word or you simply want to understand Connections before you start, everything on this page is built to help.
● NYT Connections asks you to sort 16 words into 4 hidden groups of 4 based on a shared theme.
● Each group has a difficulty color: yellow is easiest, green is easy to medium, blue is medium to hard, and purple is the hardest.
● You are allowed four mistakes before the puzzle ends, so guess carefully rather than quickly.
● Use our companion in stages: a light hint first, then the category names, then the full answers if you are truly stuck.
If you just want a nudge rather than the answer, start here. Tap the flashcard labeled See Hint, and NYT Solvers will give you a short, spoiler-light clue for each of today's four categories. These clues describe the theme in general terms so you can keep working out the puzzle yourself instead of having it handed to you.
Our hints are ordered from easiest to hardest, matching the yellow, green, blue, and purple color coding that The New York Times uses, so you always know which clue to open first.
Need more than a nudge? Tap See Group and we will reveal the four category titles without listing the words that belong to each one. This is the middle ground between a hint and a full spoiler: you will know exactly what each group is about, but you still have to place the words yourself, which keeps the puzzle satisfying to finish.
If you want to finish the puzzle and move on with your day, tap See Word, and NYT Solvers will reveal every group and every word inside it, color-coded exactly as The New York Times presents them. We also show how many mistakes are typical for that day's puzzle, so you can see whether today was considered an easy or a hard one before you compare notes with friends.
NYT Connections is a daily word and logic puzzle published by The New York Times. You are given 16 words or short phrases and asked to sort them into four hidden groups of four, where each group shares a category, such as a common theme, a type of item, or words that can all follow or precede the same word. Unlike a game with one fixed starting letter, Connections rewards pattern recognition, vocabulary, and a bit of caution, since some words are designed to fit more than one category at first glance.
The game launched in 2023 and quickly became one of the most played puzzles on the New York Times Games app, sitting alongside Wordle, Spelling Bee, and the Mini Crossword as part of the daily puzzle routine for millions of players.
● Look at all 16 words before you touch anything. Read for obvious groupings first, such as colors, animals, or synonyms.
● Select four words you believe belong together, then submit your guess.
● A correct guess locks that group into place and shows its color and category name.
● An incorrect guess costs you one of your four allowed mistakes. The tiles will shake to tell you the grouping is wrong, but you will not always be told which specific word is out of place.
● Keep guessing until you have placed all four groups correctly, or until you run out of mistakes, which ends the puzzle for that day.
A new puzzle is published every day at midnight Eastern Time, and you can only play the current day's puzzle within the New York Times Games app or website, since Connections does not currently offer an official archive of past puzzles.
The yellow category is usually the most straightforward. The connection is often literal, such as a shared category of everyday objects, and most players can solve it without much thought.
Green groups take one extra step of thinking. The words might share a less obvious property, or two or three of them might also plausibly belong to another category, which is where the puzzle starts testing you.
Blue groups tend to hinge on a less common meaning of a word, a piece of trivia, or a theme that only becomes clear once you have ruled out the other groups.
Purple is where Connections gets its reputation for being tricky. These groups often rely on wordplay, such as words that can all precede or follow a shared word, or a theme that has nothing to do with the literal meaning of the words at all. Purple is also where you will find most of the deliberately misleading overlaps with the other three colors.
● Start with the group you are most confident about, which is usually yellow, and lock it in first to reduce the number of words you are working with.
● Watch for words that seem to fit two categories at once. These overlaps are intentional traps, and they are almost always tied to the purple category.
● If a word feels oddly specific or unusual for the group you have in mind, treat that as a signal to look for a wordplay-based category instead of a literal one.
● Save your guess if you are only three out of four sure about a group. Waiting one more round to gather information costs nothing, while a wrong guess costs one of your four mistakes.
● Solve purple last whenever possible. Once the other three groups are placed, the remaining four words tell you exactly what is left, even if the theme still is not obvious.
● If you are down to your last mistake, pick the guess you are most confident about rather than trying to solve the hardest remaining group first.
● Guessing too early. Locking in a group after seeing only a partial pattern is the single biggest reason players lose a mistake.
● Ignoring word overlaps. If two categories both seem to want the same word, that word is almost never in the category you assumed.
● Overlooking simpler meanings. Purple categories sometimes hide a very ordinary theme behind unusual-looking words, so do not assume difficulty always means obscurity.
● Rushing the yellow group. It is usually easy, but a careless guess here still costs a mistake, just like any other wrong guess.
Once you understand the basics, a few habits separate players who solve Connections consistently from players who lose a guess most days.
● Group by elimination. If you are confident about three of the four words in a category, the fourth word is often forced by whatever is left over once other groups are placed.
● Read every word as a possible pun before you read it literally. Connections categories frequently use a shared prefix, suffix, or homophone rather than a shared meaning.
● Keep a mental note of any word that could belong to more than one theme, and revisit it after each correct guess, since the pool of remaining categories narrows with every group you solve.
● Play daily rather than occasionally. Recognizing the puzzle's typical patterns of misdirection is a skill that builds with repetition.
● Connections is edited by Wyna Liu, who also oversees how each day's categories are balanced across the four difficulty levels.
● The blue and green categories tend to be the ones built around trivia, while yellow and purple are more often about straightforward grouping or wordplay.
● Before you lock in a guess, it helps to say the connection out loud in your own words. If you cannot explain why four words belong together, that is often a sign you have not found the real category yet.
● Getting all four groups correct without a single mistake is sometimes called a perfect solve among regular players, and it is the daily goal for many Connections fans.
Looking to sharpen the rest of your daily puzzle routine? NYTSolvers covers today's Wordle answer if you want to keep your streak alive, a Wordle archive of past answers, and an NYT Spelling Bee answers page if you are chasing Queen Bee status without relying on hivemind.
NYT Connections is a daily puzzle from The New York Times where you sort 16 words into four hidden groups of four based on a shared category, ranked by difficulty from yellow, the easiest, to purple, the hardest.
You are allowed four incorrect guesses. Once you make a fifth mistake, the puzzle ends and reveals any groups you had not solved.
Yellow is the easiest category, green is easy to medium, blue is medium to hard, and purple is the hardest, often relying on wordplay or a less obvious theme.
Yes. NYTSolvers offers a light hint for each category, a reveal of the category names without the words, and a full answer key, so you can choose exactly how much help you want.
Wordle asks you to guess a single five-letter word within six tries, while Connections asks you to sort 16 words into four themed groups, testing pattern recognition rather than spelling.
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We also help our users decode other daily word-guessing games.
This is the NYTSolvers page for NYT Connections. Here you will find three levels of daily help, from a small nudge to the full answer key, along with clear information about how the puzzle works, what the four difficulty colors mean, and how to get better at it over time. Whether you are stuck on one tricky purple word or you simply want to understand Connections before you start, everything on this page is built to help.
● NYT Connections asks you to sort 16 words into 4 hidden groups of 4 based on a shared theme.
● Each group has a difficulty color: yellow is easiest, green is easy to medium, blue is medium to hard, and purple is the hardest.
● You are allowed four mistakes before the puzzle ends, so guess carefully rather than quickly.
● Use our companion in stages: a light hint first, then the category names, then the full answers if you are truly stuck.
If you just want a nudge rather than the answer, start here. Tap the flashcard labeled See Hint, and NYT Solvers will give you a short, spoiler-light clue for each of today's four categories. These clues describe the theme in general terms so you can keep working out the puzzle yourself instead of having it handed to you.
Our hints are ordered from easiest to hardest, matching the yellow, green, blue, and purple color coding that The New York Times uses, so you always know which clue to open first.
Need more than a nudge? Tap See Group and we will reveal the four category titles without listing the words that belong to each one. This is the middle ground between a hint and a full spoiler: you will know exactly what each group is about, but you still have to place the words yourself, which keeps the puzzle satisfying to finish.
If you want to finish the puzzle and move on with your day, tap See Word, and NYT Solvers will reveal every group and every word inside it, color-coded exactly as The New York Times presents them. We also show how many mistakes are typical for that day's puzzle, so you can see whether today was considered an easy or a hard one before you compare notes with friends.
NYT Connections is a daily word and logic puzzle published by The New York Times. You are given 16 words or short phrases and asked to sort them into four hidden groups of four, where each group shares a category, such as a common theme, a type of item, or words that can all follow or precede the same word. Unlike a game with one fixed starting letter, Connections rewards pattern recognition, vocabulary, and a bit of caution, since some words are designed to fit more than one category at first glance.
The game launched in 2023 and quickly became one of the most played puzzles on the New York Times Games app, sitting alongside Wordle, Spelling Bee, and the Mini Crossword as part of the daily puzzle routine for millions of players.
● Look at all 16 words before you touch anything. Read for obvious groupings first, such as colors, animals, or synonyms.
● Select four words you believe belong together, then submit your guess.
● A correct guess locks that group into place and shows its color and category name.
● An incorrect guess costs you one of your four allowed mistakes. The tiles will shake to tell you the grouping is wrong, but you will not always be told which specific word is out of place.
● Keep guessing until you have placed all four groups correctly, or until you run out of mistakes, which ends the puzzle for that day.
A new puzzle is published every day at midnight Eastern Time, and you can only play the current day's puzzle within the New York Times Games app or website, since Connections does not currently offer an official archive of past puzzles.
The yellow category is usually the most straightforward. The connection is often literal, such as a shared category of everyday objects, and most players can solve it without much thought.
Green groups take one extra step of thinking. The words might share a less obvious property, or two or three of them might also plausibly belong to another category, which is where the puzzle starts testing you.
Blue groups tend to hinge on a less common meaning of a word, a piece of trivia, or a theme that only becomes clear once you have ruled out the other groups.
Purple is where Connections gets its reputation for being tricky. These groups often rely on wordplay, such as words that can all precede or follow a shared word, or a theme that has nothing to do with the literal meaning of the words at all. Purple is also where you will find most of the deliberately misleading overlaps with the other three colors.
● Start with the group you are most confident about, which is usually yellow, and lock it in first to reduce the number of words you are working with.
● Watch for words that seem to fit two categories at once. These overlaps are intentional traps, and they are almost always tied to the purple category.
● If a word feels oddly specific or unusual for the group you have in mind, treat that as a signal to look for a wordplay-based category instead of a literal one.
● Save your guess if you are only three out of four sure about a group. Waiting one more round to gather information costs nothing, while a wrong guess costs one of your four mistakes.
● Solve purple last whenever possible. Once the other three groups are placed, the remaining four words tell you exactly what is left, even if the theme still is not obvious.
● If you are down to your last mistake, pick the guess you are most confident about rather than trying to solve the hardest remaining group first.
● Guessing too early. Locking in a group after seeing only a partial pattern is the single biggest reason players lose a mistake.
● Ignoring word overlaps. If two categories both seem to want the same word, that word is almost never in the category you assumed.
● Overlooking simpler meanings. Purple categories sometimes hide a very ordinary theme behind unusual-looking words, so do not assume difficulty always means obscurity.
● Rushing the yellow group. It is usually easy, but a careless guess here still costs a mistake, just like any other wrong guess.
Once you understand the basics, a few habits separate players who solve Connections consistently from players who lose a guess most days.
● Group by elimination. If you are confident about three of the four words in a category, the fourth word is often forced by whatever is left over once other groups are placed.
● Read every word as a possible pun before you read it literally. Connections categories frequently use a shared prefix, suffix, or homophone rather than a shared meaning.
● Keep a mental note of any word that could belong to more than one theme, and revisit it after each correct guess, since the pool of remaining categories narrows with every group you solve.
● Play daily rather than occasionally. Recognizing the puzzle's typical patterns of misdirection is a skill that builds with repetition.
● Connections is edited by Wyna Liu, who also oversees how each day's categories are balanced across the four difficulty levels.
● The blue and green categories tend to be the ones built around trivia, while yellow and purple are more often about straightforward grouping or wordplay.
● Before you lock in a guess, it helps to say the connection out loud in your own words. If you cannot explain why four words belong together, that is often a sign you have not found the real category yet.
● Getting all four groups correct without a single mistake is sometimes called a perfect solve among regular players, and it is the daily goal for many Connections fans.
Looking to sharpen the rest of your daily puzzle routine? NYTSolvers covers today's Wordle answer if you want to keep your streak alive, a Wordle archive of past answers, and an NYT Spelling Bee answers page if you are chasing Queen Bee status without relying on hivemind.
NYT Connections is a daily puzzle from The New York Times where you sort 16 words into four hidden groups of four based on a shared category, ranked by difficulty from yellow, the easiest, to purple, the hardest.
You are allowed four incorrect guesses. Once you make a fifth mistake, the puzzle ends and reveals any groups you had not solved.
Yellow is the easiest category, green is easy to medium, blue is medium to hard, and purple is the hardest, often relying on wordplay or a less obvious theme.
Yes. NYTSolvers offers a light hint for each category, a reveal of the category names without the words, and a full answer key, so you can choose exactly how much help you want.
Wordle asks you to guess a single five-letter word within six tries, while Connections asks you to sort 16 words into four themed groups, testing pattern recognition rather than spelling.
The puzzle is edited by Wyna Liu at The New York Times, who is also responsible for balancing each day's four categories across the difficulty levels.
The New York Times does not currently offer an official archive, so only the current day's puzzle is available to play through the New York Times Games app or website.
Connections is available to play for free, though The New York Times also offers it as part of its Games subscription alongside Wordle, Spelling Bee, and the Mini Crossword.
Solve the group you are most confident about first, watch for words that could fit more than one category, and save purple, the trickiest group, for last, since the remaining words often reveal themselves once the other three groups are placed.