Connections is the daily word challenge that is the perfect compliment to its New York Times stablemate, Wordle.
Launched in July 2023, Connections quickly became the second-most played game on the New York Times app.
How To Play ‘Connections’
The game challenges players to find common threads between a series of words. Players must group them and name the categories.
Each puzzle has 16 words, with each group of words separated into four categories. The uniting themes are from a broad range of categories.
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If all four words are correctly placed into each set, those words will be removed from the board. Each incorrect guess counts toward the mistake tally. Players can make up to four mistakes before the game ends.
Should it make the process of guessing the connections easier, players can shuffle and rearrange the board.
The board also has a color-coding system representing levels of difficulty. Yellow represents the easiest, followed by green, blue, and purple. A group’s color will only be revealed once the words in a group have been correctly connected.
To make the task even trickier, sometimes a word can belong to more than one category—but there is only one correct answer.
Connections editor Wyna Liu has been editing puzzles at the New York Times since 2020. She explained the best tactic if you found a word could belong in more than one category, and that was to try working out a different category before making your first guess.
“Doing so might take one of those extra cards out of contention, or at least remove a few cards from the board, making other categories easier to see,” Liu said.
‘Connections’ #312 Clues for Thursday, April 18
Newsweek has some hints to help you figure out today’s Connections categories.
Yellow: These are things you might see walking down a city street.
Green: For these words, think of something in your head.
Blue: These words are associated with a size.
Purple: Each of these words is associated with a shiny color.
The answers for today’s Connections will be revealed at the end of this article, so please scroll down with caution if you want to work them out for yourself.
‘Connections’ #312 Answers for Thursday, April 18
Yellow Category: SIDEWALK SIGHTS
Yellow Words: Curb, Grate, Manhole, Gutter
Green Category: HAVE IN MIND
Green Words: Aim, Intend, Mean, Plan
Blue Category: UNIT ABBREVIATIONS
Blue Words: GAL (gallon), CAL (calorie), IN (inch), OZ (ounce)
Purple Category: GOLDEN ________
Purple Words: Girls, Fleece, Parachute, Rule
Did you guess the answers correctly? If so, congratulations. If not, there will be another opportunity to crack the puzzle tomorrow.
Connections is released at midnight in your local time zone. Newsweek will be back with another round of hints and tips for each new game.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.