How to play Connections (and win more often)
Connections gives you sixteen words and one job: sort them into four groups of four. The difficulty is colour-coded — yellow (easiest), green, blue, then purple (hardest). You get four mistakes. Here's how the puzzle actually works, and the habits that turn streaks from luck into routine.
The rules in 30 seconds
- Select four words you believe share a category, then press Submit.
- Right: the group locks in with its colour and title. Wrong: you lose one of four lives.
- "One away…" means exactly three of your four were correct — a huge clue, not just a taunt.
- A new puzzle drops daily at midnight US Eastern Time (5am UK).
Strategy that actually works
1. Never submit the first group you see
The editors build red herrings on purpose: five or six words will plausibly fit an obvious category, but only four belong. If you spot an "easy" group instantly, that is precisely when to slow down and ask which of its five candidates belongs somewhere else.
2. Think purple first, submit yellow first
Purple is nearly always wordplay: homophones, hidden words, "___ + something", or words that precede/follow a common word. Identifying the wordplay pattern early tells you which ordinary-looking words are secretly reserved — then you can submit the safest group with confidence.
3. Count your candidates
Before submitting, check every remaining word against your proposed category. If five words fit, you haven't found the category yet — you've found the trap.
4. Use "one away" properly
On a "one away", don't reshuffle everything. Swap one word at a time, starting with the word you were least sure about. Each swap is a controlled experiment; wild changes waste lives.
5. Save a life for the end-game
With two groups left, eight words split 4–4 — one wrong guess still leaves information. With one life left, stop guessing and start eliminating: the puzzle is now solvable by logic alone more often than you'd think.
What the colours tell you
| Colour | Difficulty | Typical category style |
|---|---|---|
| 🟡 Yellow | Easiest | Straight synonyms ("Doomed": done, sunk, toast…) |
| 🟢 Green | Easy-medium | Members of a set (cable channels, dog breeds) |
| 🔵 Blue | Medium-hard | Specialist knowledge or narrower sets |
| 🟣 Purple | Hardest | Wordplay: homophones, hidden words, "___ fish" |
Stuck on today's grid? Our Connections hints for today reveal one tier at a time — from a single word per group to the full answer.