Waking up and staring at sixteen words that seem to have absolutely zero relationship to one another is a specific kind of modern torture. We’ve all been there. You see "Apple," "Orange," "Banana," and "Pear" and think, okay, easy money. Then you click them, and the grid shakes. One away. Suddenly, "Pear" isn't a fruit; it’s a brand of soap or a type of shape, and your entire morning is ruined before you’ve even finished your coffee. Getting help with today’s connections isn't just about finding the answers; it’s about understanding the devious psychology of Wyna Liu and the NYT puzzle team.
They want you to fail. Well, maybe not want you to fail, but they definitely want to lead you down a primrose path.
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The game is built on red herrings. It is a linguistic shell game where the most obvious connection is almost always a trap designed to eat up your four mistakes. If you want to get better, you have to stop looking for what the words are and start looking for what they do.
Why You Keep Falling for Red Herrings
The "Red Herring" is the bread and butter of the Connections puzzle. Let's say the grid has "Bass," "Tenor," "Alto," and "Flute." Your brain screams "Music!" and you hit submit. Wrong. "Flute" was actually part of a category about types of champagne glasses, and "Bass" belonged with "Perch," "Pike," and "Sole."
This is what linguistic experts call "priming." Your brain sees a pattern and immediately shuts down other possibilities to save energy. To get real help with today's connections, you have to fight that biological urge to be fast.
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I usually spend the first two minutes just staring. I don't click anything. I look for words that could fit in two places. If "Lead" is there, is it the metal? Or is it the verb? Is it a "Lead" in a play? If a word has multiple pronunciations (heteronyms), it’s almost certainly a pivot point for a difficult category.
The Secret Hierarchy of Colors
The NYT organizes these things by difficulty, which most people know, but they don't always use that knowledge to their advantage.
- Yellow: The straightforward stuff. Synonyms or very common groups.
- Green/Blue: These are the "medium" tiers. Often involve idioms, pop culture, or slightly more obscure trivia.
- Purple: This is the "meta" category. It’s rarely about what the words mean. It’s about how the words are structured.
Purple is where the real nightmares live. Sometimes it’s "Words that start with a Greek letter" (like Philanthropy or Delta). Other times it’s "Words that follow 'Stone'" (Cold, Hearted, Wall, Age). If you’re looking for help with today's connections and you’re down to your last life, look for the most nonsensical words left. If they don't seem to mean anything together, they probably share a prefix, a suffix, or a hidden "fill-in-the-blank" relationship.
Honestly, the best players I know try to solve the Purple category first. It sounds insane, but if you can spot the "meta" connection, the rest of the board usually collapses into place like a house of cards.
Breaking Down the Difficulty Spikes
The NYT doesn't keep the difficulty consistent. Monday is usually a breeze. By Thursday or Friday, the editors start getting cute. They might use words that are all five letters long, or words that all contain the letter 'Z'.
There was a famous puzzle a while back that used "O," "M," "G," and "!" as a category. People lost their minds. It felt "unfair." But that's the beauty of it. The puzzle isn't a dictionary test; it’s a lateral thinking test.
If you are stuck right now, try this: Read the words out loud. Sometimes hearing the word "Draft" helps you realize it sounds the same as "Draught," which might link it to beer or wind, whereas seeing it on the screen just makes you think of a preliminary writing piece. Your ears often catch puns that your eyes miss.
Real Strategies for Today's Grid
Don't just mash buttons. If you’ve found three words that definitely fit together—say, "London," "Paris," "Tokyo"—don't go hunting for the fourth city immediately. Instead, look at every other word and ask, "Could any of these be a city too?" If "Berlin" is there, cool. But if "Money" is also there, maybe the category isn't "World Capitals" but "Professor Characters in Money Heist."
Check for parts of speech. Are there four verbs? Four adjectives? If you have three verbs and five nouns, one of those nouns is secretly a verb. "Table" is a noun until you "table a motion." "Chair" is a piece of furniture until you "chair a meeting."
I've found that stepping away for five minutes actually works. Your "diffuse mode" of thinking takes over. When you come back, the connection between "Cricket," "Grasshopper," "Cocktail," and "Zodiac" (all types of... well, you get it) might just jump out at you.
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How to Get Better Over Time
Consistency is the only real way to improve. You start to learn the "editor's voice." You begin to recognize their favorite tropes—like using parts of a body, or types of candy bars, or words that are also names of 80s synth-pop bands.
- Shuffle the board. Seriously. The default layout is often designed to place "trap" words next to each other. Hit that shuffle button until the physical proximity of the words stops tricking your brain.
- Use a scratchpad. I sometimes write the words down on a physical piece of paper. Seeing them in my own handwriting breaks the "digital spell" of the NYT interface.
- Look for "Internal" connections. Do two words rhyme? Are they palindromes? Do they both contain double letters?
Actionable Steps for Your Current Game
If you are staring at the screen right now and you're down to your last mistake, do this:
- Identify the "Outliers": Find the two weirdest words on the board. The ones that don't seem to fit anywhere. Try to force a connection between them. If you have "Quark" and "Charm," you’re looking for subatomic particles.
- Verify the "Easy" Group: Before you submit that Yellow category, make sure none of those four words could possibly belong to a more complex Purple or Blue group. This is where most people fail.
- Check for Hidden Homophones: Say the words in different accents. "Row" (like a boat) vs "Row" (an argument).
- Count the Syllables: It's rare, but sometimes the connection is as simple (and frustrating) as the number of beats in the word.
Once you’ve cleared a group, the mental fog usually lifts. The grid becomes less crowded, and the remaining connections become more obvious. It’s all about momentum. Just don't let a "one away" message bait you into making the same mistake twice. Take a breath, rethink the definitions, and look for the word that has a double meaning you haven't considered yet.