How To Solve NYT Connections

The Puzzle Is Built Around Decoys

Connections gives you sixteen words that split into four groups of four. If that were the whole puzzle it would be easy. The craft is in the overlaps: most days at least one obvious category has five or six words that seem to fit, and only four of them belong. The rest are decoys borrowed from other groups.

So the first job is not to find a group. It is to find the category with too many members, because that is where the puzzle is trying to catch you.

Do Not Submit The First Four You See

When four words jump out together, stop and look for a fifth. If there is one, you have found the decoy and you need to know where the extra word really belongs before you submit anything. Submitting early is how most people lose their first two mistakes.

A useful habit is to say each word out loud and ask what else it could be: a verb as well as a noun, a brand, a person's name, part of a phrase. FIRE is a noun, a verb (to dismiss), and the first half of FIREWORK, FIREMAN and FIREPLACE. Every word on the board was chosen because it can be read more than one way.

Solve The Easy Group Last, Not First

It sounds backwards. The yellow group, the most straightforward one, is usually the most visible and the one most likely to have extra candidates. If you lock it in first with the wrong four words, you strand a word that another group needed. Purple and blue groups, by contrast, are usually exact: once you see the trick, exactly four words fit it.

So when you do spot a tricky category, take it. Removing four words from the board makes every remaining group easier to see.

The Purple Tricks Worth Knowing

Purple groups are built on how words look or sound rather than what they mean. The patterns repeat often enough to learn:

• Hidden words. Each word contains a smaller word, such as an animal, a body part or a number: sCOWl, BEARd, sCATter, gRATe.
• Add a letter or word. Each word becomes something new with the same addition at the front or back: ___BALL, SUN___, or an extra letter at the start.
• Sounds like. Homophones of letters, numbers or other words: SEA, TEA and JAY as the letters C, T and J.
• Starts with or ends in. Every word begins with a type of thing, like a body of water or a musical note, or ends in one.
• Famous people or titles. The words are surnames of one band's members, or first words of film titles.

Use Your Mistakes On Purpose

You have four mistakes. When you are down to two groups and unsure, it can be worth spending one to test the doubtful word rather than agonising. A wrong guess that comes back with "one away" is information: three of your four are right, and only one word needs swapping.

When You Want Help

Our Connections hints for today start by giving you one word from each group, which is usually enough to break the decoy, then the group names, then the full answer.