How to Play Connections: Rules, Colors & Trap Patterns

Connections is the New York Times' category-sorting puzzle: 16 words or short phrases arranged in a 4-by-4 grid, and your job is to split them into four groups of four that share a hidden link. It looks simple until the second or third card you were sure about turns out to belong somewhere else. This guide covers the official rules, the four difficulty colors and what they signal, the trap patterns constructors build in on purpose, and a handful of habits that cut down on wasted guesses. Prefer the puzzle solved for you? Solve today's Connections with hints for a spoiler-controlled hint ladder instead.

The rules of Connections

Every puzzle starts as the same 16 cards, shuffled into a 4-by-4 grid with no visual clue about which four belong together. Tap or click four cards you believe share a category, then submit. Guess correctly and that row locks in place, labeled with a category title and removed from the pool you're choosing from; guess wrong and you lose one of four mistakes before the puzzle ends without a full solve.

There's a built-in feedback signal worth knowing: if exactly three of your four selected cards belong to the same real category, the game tells you "one away" instead of just marking the guess wrong. That's genuine information, not a consolation message — it means your instinct about three of the four cards was correct, and only one needs swapping out.

You can also shuffle the grid's layout and deselect a guess before submitting it, neither of which costs a mistake. Shuffling doesn't change which category a card belongs to, only where it sits on screen, which can help when a pattern is easier to spot once its cards aren't spread across the grid.

The four difficulty colors, in order

Once you solve a group, its category title and color reveal what tier it belonged to. The four tiers, from easiest to hardest, are:

Yellow — usually the most literal connection on the board: a straightforward shared category with little wordplay.
Green — still fairly direct, but often needs a bit more specific or niche knowledge than yellow.
Blue — typically needs a conceptual leap: a less obvious shared property, or a category described more abstractly than its members suggest at first glance.
Purple — almost always wordplay-driven: a shared sound, a hidden word, or a pattern across the four entries rather than a shared meaning.

Solving in strict color order isn't required — the puzzle doesn't care which group you find first — but purple is deliberately the tier most likely to also be the answer to several of the other groups' near misses, which is exactly what the next section covers.

Trap patterns: overlaps and red herrings

Connections constructors build in overlap on purpose. A single card is often written so it could plausibly fit two, sometimes three, of the four categories — until you know the actual theme, several cards look interchangeable. A classic shape: one category is "things that are red," another is "types of fruit," and a card like CHERRY could belong to either one depending on which theme turns out to be real. Only one placement is correct, and the puzzle is designed so your first instinct about the ambiguous cards is wrong about as often as it's right.

Purple is the most common source of this kind of trap, since its cards frequently look like they belong to an easier, more literal category on the surface and only reveal their real — usually wordplay-based — link once you've ruled out the obvious reading. When a card feels like an unusually neat fit for an early guess, treat that as a reason to double-check rather than a reason to submit immediately.

Tips for a cleaner solve

Start with the category you're most certain about — even if it isn't yellow. Confidence, not color, should decide your first guess.
Set aside any card that could fit more than one group before you guess. If a card keeps showing up in your reasoning for two different categories, it's very likely the trap.
Use "one away" as real information. If you get it, swap out your least confident card first rather than reshuffling the whole guess.
Save purple for last unless you spot its wordplay immediately. Guessing purple early, before the more literal categories are solved, means guessing without knowing what's left over.
Reread the remaining cards once you've solved one or two groups. A category that looked ambiguous with all 16 cards in play is often obvious once eight or twelve have already been removed.
Treat your fourth mistake as a hard stop, not a formality. With one mistake left, only guess a group you'd bet on — the puzzle ends the moment you run out.

More NYT puzzle guides

Connections is one of three daily puzzles TodayHint covers. If letter puzzles are more your speed, see how to play Strands for the grid-tracing game and its spangram, or how to play Pips for the newer domino-placement puzzle. Once the rules are second nature, the Connections answers archive holds every past puzzle if you want to practice on an older grid or check a previous day's categories.

Frequently asked questions

How many mistakes am I allowed in Connections?

Four. Each wrong guess — a group of four cards that doesn’t match a real category — costs one, and the puzzle ends without a full solve once you’ve used all four. Getting a "one away" result still counts as a mistake even though it tells you how close you were.

Does the color of a category tell me anything before I solve it?

No — colors are only revealed once a group is solved; the grid gives no visual signal about difficulty beforehand. You have to work out which four cards belong together first, and the color assignment happens after.

Is Connections the same puzzle for everyone on a given day?

Yes — everyone gets the same 16 cards and the same four categories on a given calendar date. Like Strands, the New York Times unlocks the next day's puzzle at midnight in your own local time zone.

Can I change my mind after selecting four cards?

Yes, as long as you haven’t hit submit. Deselecting and reselecting cards costs nothing — only a submitted, incorrect group of four counts against your four mistakes.