If you’ve spent any time on social media over the last year, you’ve seen the grid. Those little colorful squares—yellow, green, blue, purple. It’s the visual language of the New York Times Connections game, a daily ritual that has, for many, eclipsed Wordle in both popularity and pure, unadulterated frustration. But there’s a specific phenomenon people keep talking about lately: those scores of 3 4 and 5 nyt players post to show they either narrowly escaped defeat or absolutely crushed the puzzle.
Honestly? Most people don't even know what those numbers represent at first glance.
You see a "3" and you might think someone failed. You see a "5" and you're confused because there are only four categories. The reality of how the NYT puzzle interface tracks your progress—and how the community interprets those "lives" remaining—is where the real strategy lives. It's not just about finding four groups of four. It's about navigating the red herrings Wyna Liu, the puzzle's lead editor, intentionally sprinkles in to ruin your morning.
The Math Behind the Grid
Connections gives you four lives. That’s it. If you make four mistakes, the game ends, the answers are revealed, and you’re left staring at your screen feeling slightly less intelligent than you did five minutes ago. When people discuss scores of 3 4 and 5 nyt, they are usually referring to the number of attempts it took to solve the board or the number of mistakes remaining.
Wait. Let’s back up.
If you solve it perfectly, you have all your "lives" or "hearts" intact. In the NYT app interface, you get four chances to mess up. A "perfect" game means you used zero mistakes. But in the weird, informal shorthand of the internet, a "score of 5" often refers to the total number of guesses people wish they had on a particularly brutal day. Actually, the score is better viewed as your efficiency rating.
Why the Purple Category is the Real Boss
Everyone fears the purple.
Yellow is straightforward. It's "Types of Fruit" or "Words for Happy." Green is slightly more abstract. Blue starts to get tricky with synonyms. But Purple? Purple is the "Words that follow X" or "Homophones" or "Parts of a word that don't look like they belong together."
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If you are aiming for a clean sheet—no mistakes, just a pure win—you have to identify the purple category before you even click a button. If you don't, you'll end up with one of those "One Away" messages that haunt your dreams. That's usually how a perfect score turns into a score of 3 or 4 (meaning lives left) or, worse, a total blowout.
The Strategy of the Guess
Is it better to guess early?
Some experts—yes, there are Connections experts now—argue that you should never submit a guess until you have at least three categories locked in your mind. If you see "BASS," "FLOUNDER," and "SKATE," you might immediately look for a fourth fish. But wait. "SKATE" could be part of "Ice Skating Gear." "BASS" could be an instrument.
This is the "Overlap Trap."
Basically, the NYT editors love to put five or six words that could fit a theme, but only four actually do. If you just start clicking, you lose those precious lives. When you see someone posting their results and they have three mistakes (leaving them with 1 life left), they likely fell for every single trap on the board.
The "One Away" Psychology
The most annoying part of the game is the "One Away" pop-up.
It’s a taunt. It tells you that you are 75% correct, but it gives you zero information about which word is the intruder. In this moment, your scores of 3 4 and 5 nyt players usually make a choice: do I swap one word out, or do I completely rethink the category?
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Most people just swap. And they lose another life. Then another.
How the Community Tracks Progress
The NYT hasn't officially implemented a global leaderboard with a "score of 5" or anything similar, but the way players share their grids on X (formerly Twitter) and Threads has created an informal scoring system.
- The Perfect Sweep: Solving yellow, green, blue, purple in that exact order with zero mistakes.
- The Reverse Sweep: Solving purple first. This is the ultimate "I am a genius" move.
- The Survival: Having 1 life remaining. This is the "3" or "4" struggle people reference when they talk about their stats for the day.
It's actually kinda wild how competitive this has become. People take screenshots of their "Lives Remaining" to prove they weren't just guessing wildly. If you finished with a "score" of 4 (meaning zero mistakes), you’re at the top of the food chain for that day.
The Difficulty Spike of 2025 and 2026
If you feel like the puzzles have gotten harder, you aren't imagining things. The linguistic gymnastics required to solve a Tuesday puzzle now feel like what a Friday or Saturday used to be. We’re seeing more "fill-in-the-blank" categories and fewer "synonym" categories.
For example, a recent puzzle used "____ Jacket." The answers were YELLOW, DUST, LIFE, and FULL METAL. That’s a massive leap in logic. If you don't catch "Full Metal" (referencing the Kubrick film), you're never getting that category. You're going to burn through your lives and end up with a fail.
Tips for Improving Your Daily Score
Stop clicking. Seriously. Just stop.
The biggest mistake is clicking the first four words you see that share a connection. You have to look for the words that fit multiple categories. This is called "checking for overlap."
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- Look for words that function as both nouns and verbs.
- Say the words out loud to check for homophones (like "knight" and "night").
- Look for categories involving "words that start with a color" or "words that are also US states."
- Check for "Internal Words," like "Sp-apple" or "B-orange."
Sometimes the connection isn't what the word means, but what the word is. Is it a palindrome? Does it contain a hidden animal? If you can spot one of these "meta" categories early, your chances of keeping all 4 lives intact go up exponentially.
What a "Score" Really Means for Your Brain
Psychologically, games like Connections and Wordle provide a "micro-flow" state. It's a small, manageable problem in a world that often feels chaotic. When you manage to protect your scores of 3 4 and 5 nyt, you're actually exercising your lateral thinking skills.
It’s not just trivia. It’s pattern recognition.
Experts in cognitive science often point to these puzzles as great ways to maintain "cognitive flexibility." That's the ability to switch between thinking about two different concepts or to think about multiple concepts simultaneously. When you realize "LEAD" isn't a metal but a verb meaning "to guide," that's your brain's flexibility at work.
Real Talk: Is It Okay to Cheat?
Look, we all do it. Sometimes you're down to your last life, you've got eight words left, and you just can't see it. You open a second tab. You look for a "Connections Hint" site.
Does that ruin the score?
Technically, yeah. But the NYT doesn't have a "Connections Police." If you use a hint to understand why a category works, you're actually training yourself to see that pattern next time. Just don't brag about your "perfect" score if you had to look up what a "Sloop" is.
Actionable Steps for Your Next Puzzle
If you want to stop failing and start seeing those high "lives remaining" numbers, change your workflow:
- Screenshot the board: Before you make a single move, take a screenshot. Use the markup tool on your phone to circle potential groups. It prevents "accidental clicking" syndrome.
- The "Two-Minute Rule": Don't submit anything for the first two minutes. Just stare at the words. Let your subconscious find the links.
- Work Backwards: Try to find the Purple category first. It's usually the one with the most "weird" words. If you can eliminate the hardest group, the rest of the board falls like dominoes.
- Use the Shuffle: The NYT provides a shuffle button for a reason. Often, our brains get stuck on the visual proximity of words. Shuffling them breaks that "false" connection and lets you see new patterns.
The goal isn't just to win; it's to win with style. Whether you finish with 1 life or 4, the satisfaction of that final "Category Solved" animation is why we keep coming back every morning at midnight.