Look at the grid. It’s mocking you. If you’ve spent the last ten minutes staring at sixteen words that seem to have absolutely zero in common except for the fact that they’re all written in the same font, you’re not alone. The New York Times Connections game has become a morning ritual for millions, but honestly, most of the connections tips for today you find online are just generic fluff that doesn't help when you're down to your last mistake and the purple category is looking like a linguistic nightmare.
Solving it isn't just about vocabulary. It's about psychology.
The game’s editor, Wyna Liu, is notoriously good at "red herrings." You know the feeling. You see four words that all relate to "types of cheese," you click them, and—one away. Your heart sinks. That’s because the game isn't testing what you know; it’s testing how easily you can be distracted by the obvious.
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Stop Falling for the First Group You See
Most people fail because they are too fast. They see "Apple, Banana, Orange, Grape" and smash that submit button. In the world of Connections, if a group looks too easy, it’s probably a trap. The game is designed to have "crossover" words. A word like "BRIDGE" could be a card game, a structure over water, or a part of a song. If you use it in the "structures" category too early, you might realize later you needed it for "musical terms."
Wait.
Before you click anything, try to find at least five or six words that could fit into a single category. If you find more than four, you know that category is a red herring trap. This is the golden rule of connections tips for today: the grid is a puzzle of elimination, not just identification.
The Secret Language of the Purple Category
The purple category is the "tricky" one. Usually, it involves wordplay, homophones, or words that follow a specific prefix or suffix. It’s rarely about what the word is, and more about what the word does.
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Think about "Words that start with a body part."
- Handily
- Footlights
- Eyebrow
- Armpit
If you’re looking for a thematic connection based on meaning, you’ll never find purple. You have to look at the structure of the words themselves. Honestly, sometimes the best way to solve purple is to not solve it at all. If you can narrow down the Yellow, Green, and Blue groups, Purple just falls into place by default. It's the "I have no idea what these four things have in common but they’re the only ones left" strategy. It works. It’s valid. Don't feel guilty about it.
Common Wordplay Patterns to Watch For
- Fill-in-the-blank: (e.g., _____ Jack: Apple, Pepper, Pancake, Flap)
- Homophones: (e.g., Knight, Night, Nate, Neigh)
- Palindromes: Words that are the same backward and forward.
- Compound words: Where the first or second half is a hidden theme.
Dealing with the "One Away" Frustration
We’ve all been there. You submit a guess, the little boxes shake, and the dreaded "one away" message pops up. Most players immediately try to swap one word out for another that seems similar. Stop.
When you get a "one away" message, it means you’ve likely fallen for a red herring. One of those three words you got "right" actually belongs in a different group. Instead of banging your head against that specific category, pivot. Look at the remaining eight words. Can you form a completely different group? Often, solving a different color first will remove the "imposter" word from your stuck category, making the solution obvious.
The Digital Erasure of Context
The NYT Connections game is a descendant of the "Connecting Wall" from the British quiz show Only Connect. If you think the NYT version is hard, watch an episode of that show; it’s basically the Dark Souls of word puzzles. The host, Victoria Coren Mitchell, often points out that lateral thinking is a muscle.
The more you play, the more you start to see the "NYT style." They love certain tropes. They love "Parts of a _____" or "Synonyms for 'Nonsense'." (Seriously, how many words for 'baloney' are there? Poppycock, Hogwash, Rubbish, Hooey... the list is endless).
Why Your Brain Freezes
Science says our brains are wired for pattern recognition. This is great for survival (is that a tiger in the bushes?) but bad for Connections. Your brain sees "Bass" and immediately thinks "Fish." It takes a conscious effort to override that and think "Wait, could this be 'Instrument' or 'Low Frequency'?" This cognitive flexibility is what separates the winners from the people who lose their streak on a Tuesday morning.
Practical Steps for Your Next Game
Don't just jump in. Use these tactical shifts to protect your streak.
- The Screenshot Method: If you're down to your last two lives, take a screenshot. Step away. Go get a coffee. Looking at the grid with fresh eyes thirty minutes later often reveals a connection that was invisible when you were frustrated.
- Say the Words Out Loud: Sometimes hearing the word helps you catch a homophone or a rhythmic pattern that your eyes missed. "Sloe" looks like a typo, but "Slow" sounds like a speed.
- Identify the Parts of Speech: Are they all nouns? If three are nouns and one is a verb, that verb is probably the "pivot" word that belongs elsewhere.
- Use the Shuffle Button: It exists for a reason. Our brains get stuck on the physical proximity of words. Shuffling the grid breaks those false visual associations and lets you see new pairings.
The real trick to mastering connections tips for today is acknowledging that the game is trying to lie to you. Every grid is a series of bait-and-switch maneuvers. If you approach it like a detective looking for a lie rather than a student looking for a right answer, you'll start clearing the board with zero mistakes.
Focus on the outliers. Find the weirdest word on the board—something like "QUARTZ" or "FJORD"—and figure out its possible meanings. Usually, the rarest word has the fewest possible connections, making it the best anchor for starting your first group. Once the anchor is set, the rest of the puzzle starts to crumble. Now, go look at that grid again. You've got this.