You know that feeling when you open the NYT Connections June 13 board and immediately realize you’re in for a rough morning? It's that specific brand of frustration. You see words that look like they belong together, but the moment you click, the screen shakes at you. Wasted lives. It’s annoying. Honestly, today’s puzzle is a classic example of Wyna Liu—the puzzle's editor—playing with our collective heads by using words that wear multiple hats.
Connections isn't just about vocabulary. It’s about pattern recognition and, more importantly, resisting the "red herrings" that the New York Times purposely sprinkles in to ruin your streak. If you're looking at the grid for June 13, you're likely staring at a bunch of terms that feel like they should be about movies or maybe sports, but they're actually something else entirely.
Let's break down why this specific date's puzzle is causing so much grief for the daily players.
The NYT Connections June 13 Trap: Red Herrings Everywhere
Most people lose this game because they jump too fast. They see two words that relate to, say, "baseball" and immediately go hunting for two more. On June 13, the trick is staying disciplined.
The difficulty curve in Connections is usually rated from 1 to 5. Today? It feels like a solid 4. If you aren't careful, you'll burn through your four mistakes before you even find the Yellow group. Yellow is supposed to be the easiest, right? Not always. Sometimes the "easy" category is so obvious it’s actually a decoy for a more complex Purple category.
Take a look at the word "DIRECTOR." On any other day, you'd associate that with "FILM" or "CHAIR" or "SCENE." But in the NYT Connections June 13 grid, it’s being used in a more bureaucratic sense. This is a common tactic. They take a word with a glamorous connotation and shove it into a boring, administrative category. It’s mean, but it’s brilliant.
Decoding the Groups: What’s Actually Happening?
To survive June 13, you have to look for the "hidden" synonyms.
The first group most people actually find—usually the Yellow or Green—revolves around leadership roles. We aren't talking about kings or queens here. We're talking about the people who run organizations. Think along the lines of "CHAIR," "DIRECTOR," "LEAD," and "HEAD." It’s straightforward once you see it, but "LEAD" is a nasty word because it can also be a metal or a verb meaning to guide.
Then things get weird.
There’s a group that focuses on slang for "a lot." You've probably used these words a thousand times without thinking they’d show up in a puzzle together. Words like "TON," "MINT," "SLEW," and "PILE." The word "MINT" is the real killer here. Most people see "MINT" and think of the herb or the flavor. They think of mojitos or gum. They don't immediately think of "making a mint," which is old-school slang for making a massive amount of money.
The Blue Category: A Bit of a Stretch?
Blue is usually the "wordplay" category or something slightly more abstract. For June 13, it focuses on things that are "fastened." This is where the NYT really tests your ability to think about physical objects versus metaphorical concepts.
- BUTTON
- ZIP
- SNAP
- TACK
Now, "ZIP" is the distractor. "Zip" can mean speed. It can mean nothing (as in "zip, zilch, nada"). But here, it’s about a zipper. If you were looking for "ZIP" to go with a "speed" category, you’d be searching for words that aren’t even on the board. This is why you have to look at the remaining words before you commit. If you have "ZIP" and "FAST," but no "QUICK" or "HURRY," then "ZIP" probably belongs somewhere else.
👉 See also: Finding the Expedition 33 Journal Locations Before You Get Stuck
The Dreaded Purple Category
Purple is the bane of my existence. It’s the category for people who like puns or words that follow a specific prefix. On June 13, the Purple group is actually quite clever once the lightbulb goes off.
It involves words that can follow "POT." - BELLY (Potbelly)
- LUCK (Potluck)
- HOLE (Pothole)
- SHOT (Potshot)
This is a classic "blank " or " blank" category. The problem is that "SHOT" feels like it should go with "LEAD" or "DIRECTOR" if you’re thinking about movies or weaponry. "LUCK" feels like a standalone concept. "HOLE" could be anything. Seeing the connection to "POT" requires stepping back and saying each word out loud with a prefix. It's a mental exercise that most people forget to do when they're rushing to finish the puzzle over coffee.
Why We Get Stuck on June 13
The psychology of the NYT Connections June 13 puzzle is basically a lesson in "functional fixedness." This is a cognitive bias that limits a person to using an object only in the way it is traditionally used. In the context of the puzzle, you see "MINT" and your brain locks onto "FLAVOR." You literally cannot see it as "A LARGE AMOUNT" until you force yourself to break that mental link.
The game is designed to exploit this. By placing "MINT" near "PEPPER" (if it were there) or "COOL," the editors nudge you toward a mistake.
Also, let’s talk about the word "TACK." In this grid, it’s a fastener. But it could also be a sailing term. It could mean "cheap" or "tacky." It could be a "tack" in a conversation (a direction). When a single word has four or five distinct meanings, it’s almost certainly going to be a pivot point for a mistake.
Strategies for Beating the NYT Connections June 13 Grid
If you haven't finished yet, or you're looking back trying to figure out where your life went wrong, here is how you should have approached it.
- Don't click anything for the first 60 seconds. Just look. Find the overlaps.
- Identify the "chameleon" words. In this puzzle, that’s "MINT" and "LEAD." These words have the most potential to live in two different groups.
- Work backward from Purple. If you can spot the "POT" connection early, the rest of the board collapses like a house of cards.
- Shuffle is your friend. Sometimes just seeing the words in a different physical order breaks the cognitive bias. Your brain stops seeing "DIRECTOR" next to "SNAP" and starts seeing it next to "CHAIR."
Final Insights on the June 13 Puzzle
The NYT Connections June 13 puzzle isn't the hardest one we've seen this year, but it's certainly top-tier for trickery. The "POT" category is a very "New York Times" style move—simple in hindsight, maddening in the moment.
If you struggled with "MINT" or "SLEW," don't feel bad. "SLEW" is a bit of an archaic term that doesn't get a lot of play in modern texting or casual conversation, unless you're talking about a "slew of problems."
To improve for tomorrow, start practicing the "prefix game." Look at any word and try to put "HEAD," "BACK," or "POT" in front of it. It sounds silly, but that is the secret sauce for cracking the Purple categories.
The best way to handle these puzzles is to recognize that the first connection you see is almost certainly a trap. If you see four words that perfectly describe "Types of Dogs," there is a 90% chance that one of those words actually belongs in a category called "Things you do to a clock."
Actionable Next Steps for Connections Players
- Check the "Word of the Day": Often, the NYT includes words that have been in the crossword recently. If you do both, you'll start to see the crossover in their dictionary.
- Say words out loud: Your auditory processing sometimes catches a connection (like "Pot-Shot") that your visual processing misses.
- Analyze your errors: If you thought "TACK" and "LEAD" went together because of... I don't know, "things in a toolbox"... ask yourself why that didn't work. Usually, it's because there wasn't a fourth word to round out the set.
- Save the easy ones: If you are 100% sure about the "Leadership" category (CHAIR, DIRECTOR, etc.), hold off on submitting it. Use those words to eliminate possibilities for the harder groups first. If you know "DIRECTOR" is definitely in the leader group, then you know it cannot be the "Director" of a film in a movie category. Elimination is your strongest weapon.