Connections Hints Today

How To Use These Hints

Hint 1 places one word in each of the four groups without telling you what the groups are. That is often all it takes, because the hardest part of Connections is working out which of the sixteen words is the decoy. Hint 2 gives away the four group names, which turns the puzzle into sorting. The full answer stays shut until you open it.

If you only want a nudge, start with the purple word in hint 1. Purple is the group built on wordplay, hidden words or a shared letter pattern, and once you see what it is doing the other three usually fall out in order.

Connections In One Minute

The board has sixteen words. They split into exactly four groups of four, each linked by something in common. You select four words and submit. A correct group locks in and takes a color. A wrong one costs a mistake, and four mistakes ends the game.

The colors run from yellow, the most straightforward group, through green and blue to purple, the trickiest. The puzzle is built so that several words fit more than one group, which is the whole game: the obvious set of four almost always has a fifth candidate hiding in it.

Getting Better At It

Look for the group that has more than four candidates first, then work out which one belongs elsewhere. Read every word as a possible half of a compound, a hidden smaller word, or something that sounds like something else. Our Connections strategy guide walks through the common purple tricks.

About These Pages

Hints are built automatically from each day's puzzle, then checked against this page's rules: nothing is revealed until you open it, and every hint gives away less than the one after it. Word Unscrambler is independent and is not affiliated with The New York Times. The games themselves are at nytimes.com, and a subscription is the best way to support the people who make them.