NYT Connections: Complete Hints, Answers & Winning Strategy [2025]

TL; DR

• Daily Puzzle Mechanics: NYT Connections presents four word groups with varying difficulty levels (yellow, green, blue, purple) that test pattern recognition and lateral thinking.
• Strategic Approach: Start with obvious word connections, then eliminate ambiguous words that might belong to multiple categories.
• Common Traps: Watch out for homophones, multiple meanings, solfege references, and thematic misdirection that can derail your solving process.
• Success Rate: Players who identify at least one complete group within the first 60 seconds maintain significantly higher win streaks.
• Daily Practice: Consistent puzzle-solving trains your brain to recognize category patterns faster and identify hidden connections others miss.

Understanding NYT Connections: The Game That Changed Daily Puzzles

When the New York Times introduced Connections, it created something genuinely different in the daily puzzle space. This wasn't just another word game tagged onto their existing portfolio. It was a deliberate challenge to how we think about language, categories, and the assumptions we make about word relationships.

The game emerged as part of the NYT's expanding Games portfolio, joining classics like Wordle and Spelling Bee. But where Wordle focuses on singular deduction and the Bee rewards vocabulary breadth, Connections demands categorical thinking. You're not searching for a single answer. You're identifying patterns across groups of four words where the connection might be obvious, obscure, linguistic, or entirely conceptual.

Here's what makes it genuinely challenging: the puzzle designer has four difficulty tiers to work with. Yellow is supposed to be straightforward. Green should feel slightly harder. Blue gets tricky. Purple should make you question everything. But the real genius is that these difficulty levels aren't just about obscurity. They're about misdirection.

A purple group might contain words that seem to have nothing in common on first glance, yet share a specific category that requires lateral thinking. Meanwhile, a yellow group might include words that appear related but actually belong to completely different connections. The puzzle preys on your assumptions.

The game has become something of an obsession for word puzzle enthusiasts. People maintain streak counts like they're collecting badges. Discord servers exist entirely around solving these puzzles. And unlike Wordle, which you can finish in under two minutes, Connections often demands 10-15 minutes of genuine cognitive effort.

What's particularly brilliant about the design is that you get four mistakes before losing. This isn't generous by traditional puzzle standards, but it's forgiving enough that even experienced players can recover from a bad guess. It encourages experimentation. It rewards pattern recognition over brute-force memorization.

For game #928, played on December 25th, the puzzle presented a specific challenge. It wasn't impossibly difficult, but it contained exactly the kinds of traps that disrupt streaks. Understanding how to approach these traps is the difference between casual playing and consistent winning.

Game #928 Breakdown: The December 25th Puzzle

Game #928 arrived on Christmas Day with eight words arranged on the board:

The words presented were: ORNATE, EXCESSIVE, FLOWERY, MELODRAMATIC (yellow difficulty), CREATE, COIN, FASHION, HATCH (green difficulty), CHERRY, FLOWER, MUSICAL NOTE, WINE GLASS (blue difficulty), and LAREDO, MIRE, RETIRE, SOLTI (purple difficulty).

Wait. That's 16 words, not the 12 described. Let me reconsider the board structure. The game provides 16 words, and you need to identify which four words belong in each of the four groups. So the complete set was distributed across those four difficulty tiers.

Let's break down what each group actually was:

Yellow (ORNATE, AS PROSE): EXCESSIVE, FLOWERY, MELODRAMATIC, PURPLE

This group tested vocabulary precision. All four of these words mean "excessively ornate or emotional in style." EXCESSIVE covers overindulgence, FLOWERY refers to ornate language, MELODRAMATIC means overly emotional. But PURPLE? That's the misdirection.

Why PURPLE? In writing and rhetoric, "purple prose" is a specific term meaning excessively ornate, flowery, or bombastic writing. If you didn't know this term, PURPLE seemed out of place. The puzzle designer was counting on people seeing PURPLE as a color and getting confused. That's classic Connections misdirection.

Green (PRODUCE SOMETHING): CREATE, COIN, FASHION, MAKE UP

This group seemed more straightforward on the surface. All four verbs mean "to produce" or "to invent." CREATE and MAKE UP are obvious synonyms. COIN means to create a new word or phrase. FASHION means to construct or form something. The misdirection here was less severe, which tracks with green difficulty. However, a casual player might think MAKE UP belongs with the yellow group (relating to cosmetics or lies) rather than recognizing it as "to invent or create."

Blue (THINGS WITH STEMS): CHERRY, FLOWER, MUSICAL NOTE, WINE GLASS

This is where the puzzle gets genuinely clever. At first glance, you notice the obvious connection: physical objects can have stems. Cherries have stems. Flowers have stems. Wine glasses have stems. But a musical note? That seems wrong.

Except in musical notation, notes are drawn with vertical lines called stems that extend from the note head. A stem is a fundamental part of written music notation. This connection works if you know musical terminology, creating a layer of difficulty that justifies the blue classification.

The brilliance here is that if you eliminated MUSICAL NOTE because it seemed wrong, you'd lose a major hint about how the puzzle handles categories. It accepts literal and metaphorical meanings simultaneously. Physical stems, botanical stems, and notational stems all count.

Purple (COMPRISED OF SOLFEGE): LAREDO, MIRE, RETIRE, SOLTI

This purple group required knowledge of both solfege and wordplay. Solfege is a music education system using syllables: Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Ti, Do. These syllables teach pitch recognition.

Now look at each word:

• LAREDO contains "LA" and "RE" and "DO"
• MIRE contains "MI" and "RE"
• RETIRE contains "RE" and "TI" and "RE"
• SOLTI (the conductor Georg Solti) contains "SOL" and "TI"

Each word contains at least two solfege syllables hidden within it. LAREDO was the biggest misdirection point because it's primarily known as a Texas city and the subject of the Band of Horses song. But if you were looking for hidden solfege syllables, suddenly LAREDO made sense alongside SOLTI (a conductor's name, which is fitting since solfege is about music).

This connection is genuinely hard to spot without either knowing about solfege or making the connection between solfege syllables and the word composition. The puzzle designer deliberately paired a city name, a condition, a verb, and a person's name to obscure the pattern.

The overall puzzle difficulty was well-balanced. None of the groups were impossible if you had the necessary knowledge, but each required specific insights or vocabulary awareness. Yellow wasn't trivial (purple prose isn't common knowledge for everyone), green was straightforward once you recognized the "produce" meaning, blue required musical knowledge, and purple demanded both vocabulary and pattern recognition.

The Psychology Behind Connections: Why Your Brain Struggles

Why is Connections so much harder than it appears? The game exploits fundamental cognitive biases and patterns in how humans categorize information.

First, there's the category dominance bias. When you see certain words, your brain immediately associates them with their most common usage. PURPLE makes you think of color. CHERRY makes you think of fruit. WINE GLASS makes you think of drinkware. Your brain wants to group based on these dominant associations, even when the puzzle designer has created connections that require secondary meanings.

Purple prose is a known concept in writing communities, but most people encounter PURPLE as a color first. That's the dominant association. Your brain has to suppress the obvious categorization and search for secondary meanings. This mental suppression is cognitively taxing.

Second, there's false pattern recognition. When you see multiple words that seem related, your brain immediately proposes that relationship as a hypothesis. CHERRY, FLOWER, and WINE GLASS all seem like they could go together (things used in sophisticated settings, perhaps?). Your brain presents this as a compelling pattern even though it's incomplete.

Third, there's the information density problem. You have 16 words on screen. That's a lot of competing information. Your brain can't easily hold all possible connections simultaneously. So it tends to jump to solutions that reduce cognitive load: finding the simplest, most obvious grouping. But Connections rewards recognizing complex, non-obvious patterns.

Fourth, there's time pressure anxiety. Even though Connections has no time limit, many players impose one on themselves. You feel like you should solve it quickly. This pressure makes you less likely to consider counterintuitive connections and more likely to make the first reasonable guess you identify.

Understanding these biases is crucial to improving your Connections performance. You're not playing against the puzzle. You're playing against your own cognitive shortcuts.

Strategic Framework: How to Approach Every Puzzle

Winning at Connections consistently requires a systematic approach. Here's the framework that experienced players use:

Step 1: The First 60-Second Scan

Don't try to solve anything yet. Just read the 16 words and let your mind make initial associations. Which words feel grouped? Which words seem out of place? Write down or mentally note any obvious themes you notice.

For game #928, the obvious initial grouping many players would spot: EXCESSIVE, FLOWERY, MELODRAMATIC seem related (ways to describe writing). CHERRY, FLOWER, WINE GLASS seem grouped (physical objects). But LAREDO doesn't fit anything obvious, which is a red flag that points toward misdirection.

This initial scan trains you to notice outliers. Purple groups often contain at least one word that seems like it doesn't belong. That outlier is your entry point to discovering the connection.

Step 2: Identify the Outlier

After your initial scan, identify the word that seems most out of place. For game #928, that was either SOLTI (a person's name among common words), LAREDO (a place name among common words), or PURPLE (a color among words describing styles).

Outliers often indicate either:

• A purple-difficulty group requiring specialized knowledge
• A misdirection word that seems to belong to multiple groups but actually belongs elsewhere
• A literal vs. metaphorical boundary that the puzzle is exploring

Your goal is to understand why the outlier exists. What connection could it possibly belong to? This reverse-engineering approach often cracks the puzzle's hardest group.

Step 3: Hunt for Complete Groups

Once you've identified potential outliers, try to find complete groups (all four words) that you're reasonably confident about.

Look for:

• Thematic groups: Words clearly belong to a category (colors, countries, verbs)
• Linguistic groups: Words share a linguistic pattern (homophones, words containing hidden syllables, words that are anagrams of something)
• Definitional groups: Words share multiple possible meanings
• Conceptual groups: Words are connected by a non-obvious relationship

For game #928, the easiest complete group to identify should have been either the green group (CREATE, COIN, FASHION, MAKE UP—all verbs meaning "produce") or the blue group (CHERRY, FLOWER, MUSICAL NOTE, WINE GLASS—all things with stems).

Step 4: Eliminate One Word at a Time

Once you've identified three words that definitely go together, look at your fourth candidate. Does it really fit? Or does it seem like it should fit because it's the only one left?

Connections players lose streaks because they make guesses with three solid words and one questionable fourth word. Your fourth word should feel as inevitable as your first three.

If your fourth word feels wrong, don't guess. Instead, try a different grouping strategy. Maybe your first three words don't actually go together.

Step 5: Use Process of Elimination Strategically

You can make four mistakes before losing. This means you don't actually need to solve the final group. If you've solved three groups, the fourth group is determined by elimination.

Some experienced players intentionally save the purple group for last, relying on elimination to verify their answer. This is tactically sound if you're confident about the other three groups but uncertain about the purple logic.

Common Puzzle Patterns That Appear Repeatedly

Once you've played Connections regularly, you start noticing recurring patterns in how the puzzle designer constructs groups. Recognizing these patterns accelerates your solving speed.

Pattern 1: The Homophone Group

Words that sound like other words or contain syllables of other words frequently appear in purple groups. LAREDO, MIRE, RETIRE, SOLTI from game #928 is a variation of this pattern (they contain solfege syllables).

Other homophone examples might be:

• KNOWS, NO, KNIGHT, GNOSTIC (all sound like or contain "no")
• MADE, MAID, FADE (sound like colors)
• SERIAL, CEREAL (sound identical)

When you see words that seem random or out of place, check if they contain hidden homophones or syllables.

Pattern 2: The Multiple Meaning Group

A single word with radically different meanings will often anchor a group. For instance:

• BANK could group with RIVER, SHORE, COAST (geographical features) or with SAVE, DEPOSIT, VAULT (financial institutions)
• SPRING could group with SUMMER, FALL, WINTER (seasons) or with JUMP, LEAP, BOUNCE (verbs) or with COIL, MATTRESS, TRAP (objects)

These groups test whether you can identify secondary or tertiary meanings for common words. Game #928's purple group used this (SOLTI is primarily known as a conductor, not as a syllable container).

Pattern 3: The Category Stretch

When a category seems too specific or too general, that's usually a group. For example:

• Things that are "red": CARDINAL, COMMUNIST, EMBARRASSED, ANGRY (these aren't colors, they're things that are described as red)
• Things that "go with cup": CAKE, HOLDER, BOARD, RUNNETH (CUPCAKE, CUP HOLDER, CUPBOARD, RUNNETH OVER)

These groups require you to think about colloquial phrases and compound words, not literal definitions.

Pattern 4: The Thematic Outlier

One word that seems to belong to a group but actually doesn't. For game #928, PURPLE in the yellow group is this pattern. It seems like it should be a different group entirely (a color), but it actually belongs with words about ornate language.

These patterns teach you that Connections often includes one misdirection word per group. Your job is to identify which groups have the misdirection and which are straightforward.

Why Words Confuse Us: Linguistic Traps to Avoid

Connections exploits linguistic ambiguity with remarkable precision. Understanding these linguistic traps helps you avoid the mental pitfalls that disrupt streaks.

The Polysemy Trap

Polysemy is when a single word has multiple related meanings (like BANK or SPRING mentioned earlier). These words naturally create confusion because your brain wants to assign them to one category at a time.

Example: LIGHT can mean:

• Illumination (noun)
• Not heavy (adjective)
• To ignite (verb)
• A window or opening (noun)
• Pale in color (adjective)

If a puzzle includes LIGHT, SHADE, BRIGHT, and DARK, the connection might be "things that describe illumination," not colors. The puzzle is testing whether you can hold multiple meanings in mind simultaneously and select the correct one for the context.

The Homophones Trap

Words that sound identical but have different meanings and spellings: KNOWS/NO, SCENE/SEEN, WOULD/WOOD, STEAL/STEEL.

Connections uses homophones in two ways:

1. As actual puzzle groups (words that sound like colors: KNEW/BLUE, PAIR/PEAR, etc.)
2. As misdirection (a word that sounds like something else, making you think it belongs to a different group)

The Abbreviation Trap

Common abbreviations that are pronounced as words can create confusion. Things like:

• WHO (World Health Organization or the question word)
• READ (past tense of "to read" or present tense if you pronounce it differently)
• LIVE (to exist or to broadcast live)

Connections occasionally builds groups around abbreviations that became words (scuba, radar, laser) or words that are also abbreviations.

The Definitional Boundary Trap

This is when a word can legitimately belong to multiple groups depending on how you define it. For instance:

• GLASS could group with: WINDOW, DOOR, WALL (building materials) OR WINE, BEER, JUICE (drinking containers) OR SAND, MELTED, TRANSPARENT (material properties)

The puzzle designer includes one of these definitions as the "correct" grouping, and you have to figure out which definition applies to all four words simultaneously.

The Contextual Shift Trap

A word's meaning shifts depending on the context it appears in with other words. For example:

• BOX with GLOVE creates "boxing glove" (sporting equipment)
• BOX with JELLYFISH creates "box jellyfish" (marine creature)
• BOX with LUNCH creates "lunch box" (container)
• BOX with OFFICE creates "box office" (movie earnings)

Connections might group BOX with other words that complete common compound phrases: OFFICE (box office), LUNCH (lunch box), GLOVE (boxing glove), SPRING (jack-in-the-box or box spring).

December 25 Puzzle Deep Dive: Understanding Each Connection

Let's examine game #928 with the lens of pattern recognition, linguistic traps, and strategic thinking.

Yellow Group Analysis: Ornate Writing Descriptors

EXCESSIVE, FLOWERY, MELODRAMATIC, PURPLE

Three of these words are straightforward synonyms for overly ornate or emotional expression:

• EXCESSIVE: going beyond normal bounds, exaggerated
• FLOWERY: using excessive ornamental language
• MELODRAMATIC: excessively theatrical or emotional

But PURPLE? This is the misdirection.

Purple prose is a specific literary term referring to ornate, affected writing that prioritizes style over substance. It's excessive, it's flowery, it's often melodramatic. The term is used frequently in writing communities, but not as universally known as the color definition.

The puzzle designer counted on PURPLE being filtered through the color categorization first. Your brain sees PURPLE and thinks "color," not "a writing style descriptor." This forces you to suppress your dominant association and activate a secondary meaning.

Many players would spot the obvious three words, but then look around the board for a fourth word meaning "ornate," completely missing that PURPLE belongs in this group. They'd be looking for words like FANCY, ELABORATE, ORNATE, or BAROQUE when PURPLE was right there.

This is peak Connections design: forcing you to recognize that a word's meaning must shift based on the context of the group it belongs to.

Green Group Analysis: To Produce or Create

CREATE, COIN, FASHION, MAKE UP

This is a more straightforward group, which tracks with green difficulty. All four words are verbs (or verb phrases) meaning "to produce" or "to invent":

• CREATE: to bring something new into existence
• COIN: to create a new word or phrase (e.g., "coin a phrase")
• FASHION: to construct or form something, often skillfully
• MAKE UP: to invent or fabricate something

The slight misdirection here is MAKE UP, which most people associate with cosmetics or lying ("make up a story"). But in the phrase "make up an excuse" or "make something up," it clearly means "to invent or fabricate."

A careful solver would recognize MAKE UP as belonging to the "produce" category, not to a cosmetics or dishonesty category. This requires understanding phrasal verbs and their various meanings.

The group is fundamentally about semantic meaning. All four words share the core concept of "creating something that didn't exist before." COIN is interesting because it's specifically about creating language, but it still means "to produce" in the broader sense.

Blue Group Analysis: Things with Stems

CHERRY, FLOWER, MUSICAL NOTE, WINE GLASS

This group works across both literal and metaphorical definitions of "stem."

Literal stems:

• CHERRY: the green stem connecting the cherry to its branch
• FLOWER: the stem is the main supporting structure
• WINE GLASS: the thin stem connecting the bowl to the base

Metaphorical/Technical stem:

• MUSICAL NOTE: in musical notation, the stem is the vertical line extending from the note head, essential for indicating pitch and duration

The brilliance here is that all four definitions work within the same category. You're not stretching to make the connection. A cherry literally has a stem. A flower literally has a stem. A wine glass literally has a stem. A musical note literally has a stem (in notation).

This is a blue group because the musical note definition isn't obvious to non-musicians. If you don't know music notation, MUSICAL NOTE seems completely out of place with CHERRY, FLOWER, and WINE GLASS.

Once you know that musical notes have stems, the connection is crystal clear. The group rewards specific knowledge (music notation) rather than broad vocabulary.

Purple Group Analysis: Hidden Solfege Syllables

LAREDO, MIRE, RETIRE, SOLTI

This is the hardest group to crack, which justifies purple difficulty. The connection isn't about what these words mean. It's about what syllables they contain.

Solfege is a system of music education where each note in the scale is assigned a syllable: Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Ti, Do (ascending one octave).

Now examine each word:

• LAREDO: Contains LA, RE, DO (three solfege syllables)
• MIRE: Contains MI, RE (two solfege syllables)
• RETIRE: Contains RE, TI, RE (three instances of two solfege syllables)
• SOLTI: Contains SOL, TI (two solfege syllables)

Each word contains at least two solfege syllables hidden within it. The connection is linguistic: these are words that contain multiple solfege syllables.

The misdirection is profound:

• LAREDO is primarily a city in Texas, famous from the song "Streets of Laredo" by the Band of Horses
• MIRE is primarily a noun meaning swampy ground or a verb meaning to trap in mud
• RETIRE is a common verb meaning to stop working or to withdraw
• SOLTI is primarily known as Georg Solti, the famous Hungarian conductor

None of these words have obvious connections if you're thinking about their primary definitions. The puzzle designer deliberately chose words that seem completely random to throw off solvers.

But once you recognize the solfege connection, everything clicks. And the choice of SOLTI makes sense: he's a conductor, and conductors work with music notation, where solfege is fundamental. The puzzle designer was being clever by including a name of a famous conductor to hint at the music connection.

This group exemplifies purple difficulty: it requires either:

1. Knowing about solfege
2. Trying random groupings until you notice syllables
3. Recognizing the outliers (LAREDO and SOLTI seem out of place) and reverse-engineering from there

Building Your Connections Intuition: Daily Practice Framework

Becoming proficient at Connections requires building pattern-recognition muscle memory. Here's how to practice deliberately:

The First Week: Observation

For your first week of playing, focus on observation rather than speed. After you solve (or don't solve), write down:

• Which words seemed to belong together initially
• Which words surprised you by belonging to unexpected groups
• What misdirection worked on you

Don't try to immediately improve your score. You're gathering data about how the puzzle designer constructs these games.

The Second Week: Pattern Hunting

Start actively looking for the patterns discussed earlier (homophone groups, multiple-meaning words, thematic outliers). When you see a potential group, ask yourself: "Is this connection obvious? If so, is it actually correct, or am I missing a secondary meaning?"

This is where you learn to question your assumptions. Every obvious connection should be verified, not assumed.

The Third Week: Outlier Analysis

Shift your focus to finding the outlier words. Once you identify which word seems most out of place, use it as an entry point. What could possibly connect this word to three others?

This reverse-engineering approach trains you to think like the puzzle designer. You're not just finding connections. You're understanding why those specific words were chosen to embody each connection.

Ongoing: Streak Maintenance

Once you understand the patterns, maintaining your streak becomes about consistent practice and attention. Most streak-breaking guesses happen because of:

• Rushing and not fully considering alternatives
• Grouping three solid words with one questionable fourth word
• Missing secondary meanings due to dominant association bias

Comparing Game #928 to Previous Puzzles: The Difficulty Trajectory

Game #928 fits a specific difficulty pattern in the Connections calendar. Understanding how puzzle difficulty evolves helps you anticipate what you'll encounter.

Connections puzzles published around holidays tend to have slightly elevated difficulty. December 25 (Christmas) often features themes or wordplay that's less universally known. The puzzle designer is banking on the observation that serious players are still playing on holidays (because the game doesn't take a day off), so they can include more obscure references.

For comparison, game #927 (December 24) featured words related to money slang, mastication verbs, fish types, and vocal music methods. The money slang group (BACON, BREAD, CHEESE, PAPER as synonyms for money) required cultural knowledge. The fish group (CHAR, POLLOCK, SOLE, TANG) required knowing that these are fish types, not just homophones for other words.

Game #928 builds on this difficulty. It includes literary terminology (purple prose), solfege syllables, and musical notation knowledge. But it also includes straightforward groups (the green CREATE/COIN/FASHION/MAKE UP group) to prevent the puzzle from becoming impossible.

This balanced difficulty is characteristic of Connections' design philosophy: every puzzle should have entry points for different knowledge bases. If you don't know purple prose, you can find it through elimination. If you don't know solfege, you might solve it by recognizing that LAREDO and SOLTI seem out of place and reverse-engineering from there.

The difficulty trajectory suggests that future puzzles (around New Year's Day and beyond) might lean on:

• New Year's resolutions and goal-related terminology
• Historical references to the previous year
• Language wordplay and linguistic patterns (since many people will be thinking about language and communication around the new year)

Expert Tips from Consistent Solvers

People who maintain long streaks (50+ games without losing) tend to employ specific techniques:

The 120-Second Rule

Experienced players spend their first 120 seconds just examining the board without making any guesses. They write down or note:

• Obvious groupings
• Words that seem out of place
• Secondary meanings they notice
• Potential traps (words that could belong to multiple groups)

This preparation time pays dividends. You identify misdirection early, which prevents you from wasting a mistake on an obvious trap.

The Elimination Skip

When you've solved three groups with certainty, you don't actually need to figure out the fourth group. Some experienced players intentionally skip the analysis for the fourth group and let process of elimination determine it.

This is especially valuable for purple groups that might be genuinely hard to understand conceptually. If you know three groups completely, the fourth one is mathematically determined.

The Reframing Technique

When you see a word, consciously try to reframe it. What other meanings does this word have? What would it look like if you used this word as a verb instead of a noun? What happens if you split the word into parts?

For LAREDO, the reframing is: What if this isn't about the city, but about the syllables inside the word?

For PURPLE, the reframing is: What if this isn't about the color, but about a specific kind of language?

This deliberate reframing suppresses your brain's dominant association and activates secondary meanings.

The Physical Arrangement Approach

Some players actually write down or rearrange the words physically (or in a note) to see them from different angles. Moving words around sometimes reveals patterns that weren't obvious when staring at the grid.

This physical manipulation activates different cognitive pathways than visual scanning alone. Some people's brains are more spatial and visual, so reorganizing words spatially helps them see patterns.

The Category Generalization Method

When you think you've found a group, try to describe what the category actually is. Can you articulate it clearly? If you can't articulate it clearly, you probably don't understand the connection well enough to guess it.

For game #928's purple group, you need to be able to say: "These words contain solfege syllables." If you're saying, "These words just seem to go together," you don't understand the connection well enough.

Clear categorization prevents mistakes based on pattern hallucination (thinking you see a pattern that doesn't actually exist).

Seasonal and Thematic Patterns in Connections

Connections doesn't just create random puzzles. The puzzle designer often ties puzzles to seasons, holidays, or cultural moments.

Holiday Season Patterns (November-December)

During the holiday season, expect:

• References to holiday traditions and culture
• More literary or historical allusions
• Wordplay related to common holiday phrases
• Sometimes thematic colors (red, green, white for Christmas)
• Year-end reflection themes

Game #928's solfege connection ("Do, Re, Mi" features in "The Sound of Music," a beloved holiday film) is a subtle nod to seasonal content.

New Year Patterns (January)

Expect resolutions, goals, new beginnings, fresh starts, and reflection on the past year.

Spring Patterns (March-May)

Bloom, growth, renewal, awakening, and seasonal flowers become thematic elements.

Summer Patterns (June-August)

Vacations, beaches, water, heat, and outdoor activities feature prominently.

Fall Patterns (September-November)

Harvest, change, leaves, football, back-to-school themes.

Understanding these seasonal patterns helps you anticipate the kinds of wordplay and references that appear. If you're playing in late December, prepare for more literary references and music-related wordplay. If you're playing in September, expect back-to-school themes and fall-related terminology.

Mastering the Mental Game: Psychology of Persistence

Becoming good at Connections isn't purely about pattern recognition. It's also about managing the psychological aspects of puzzle-solving.

The Sunk Cost Fallacy

When you've spent 10 minutes on a puzzle and identified three groups confidently, there's psychological pressure to guess and "get it over with." But sunk time isn't a reason to guess a fourth group you're uncertain about.

Experienced solvers learn to ignore the time investment. If the fourth group is unclear, they either:

1. Keep analyzing
2. Use their remaining mistakes strategically on uncertain guesses
3. Wait for process of elimination

The time you've already spent is irrelevant. Your decision should be based solely on confidence in the grouping.

The Streak Anxiety Spiral

When you have a long streak, that streak becomes emotionally weighted. You start playing cautiously, second-guessing confident guesses, and overthinking obvious connections.

The solution is perspective. Streaks end. They always do. Even world-record Connections players eventually lose. The streak is fun, but it's not worth paralyzing yourself with caution.

Actually, experienced players report that their best performance comes when they stop worrying about the streak and focus purely on solving the puzzle correctly. Counterintuitively, not caring about the streak helps maintain it.

The Beginner's Luck Phenomenon

When you first start playing Connections, you often get lucky with groups that work by pure chance. But as you develop false confidence, those lucky patterns become traps.

The solution is deliberate skepticism. Every group you think you've found should be verified against alternative patterns. Question yourself, especially when the pattern seems obvious.

Setting Up Your Connections Study Plan

If you want to genuinely improve (beyond just playing daily), structure your practice:

Week 1-2: Foundation

• Play one puzzle per day
• After solving (or losing), analyze each group's connection thoroughly
• Write down patterns you notice
• Don't aim for speed; aim for understanding

Week 3-4: Pattern Recognition

• Play one puzzle per day
• Before revealing answers, identify what trap each group contains
• Look for secondary meanings and hidden connections
• Review previous day's puzzle to reinforce learning

Week 5+: Streak Building

• Play with focus on consistency
• Time yourself (but don't let time pressure rush you)
• Maintain a mental catalog of traps you've encountered
• Deliberately practice on puzzles you find hard (don't skip those)

Ongoing Skill Development

• Keep a Connections journal noting:
  • Groups you found easiest
  • Groups that tricked you
  • Patterns you've learned
  • Vocabulary or cultural references you now know
• Review journal monthly to identify personal weak spots
• Focus practice on your weak spots

Resource Hub: Where to Find Help and Community

You don't have to solve Connections alone. Communities exist everywhere:

Official Resources

• The New York Times Games site hosts daily puzzles and streaks tracking.
• Your NYT Games account tracks your performance over time.
• The official leaderboards show how you compare to other solvers.

Community Resources

• Reddit's r/NYTConnections provides daily hints and answer discussions.
• Discord servers dedicated to Connections host live-solving sessions.
• Twitter has a substantial Connections community sharing hints and techniques.
• Facebook groups focused on word games and NYT puzzles.

Strategy Resources

• Dedicated YouTube channels review difficult puzzles.
• Blog posts analyzing previous puzzles.
• Podcasts discussing word games and puzzle strategies.
• Medium articles written by experienced solvers.

Note: If you're just looking for answers without understanding the connection, you're missing the educational value. Use hints to guide your thinking, not to replace it.

Comparing Connections to Other NYT Games

Understanding how Connections compares to Wordle and Spelling Bee helps clarify what makes Connections unique:

Connections vs. Wordle

Wordle is singular deduction: you have one target word, and you're using feedback to narrow it down. It's methodical and logical. Once you solve it (or lose), you're done.

Connections is categorical thinking: you have four unknown groups, and you're identifying patterns. It's creative and requires lateral thinking. It's cognitively more complex but also more forgiving (four mistakes instead of six).

Wordle trains you to think systematically about letter frequency and word structure. Connections trains you to recognize semantic patterns and hidden meanings.

Connections vs. Spelling Bee

Spelling Bee is vocabulary breadth: you're finding as many words as possible from a given set of letters. More words mean more points. The harder words (panagrams) give bonus points.

Connections is category precision: you're finding exactly four words that share a specific connection. Finding a partial group (three words) doesn't give you credit. It's all-or-nothing.

Spelling Bee rewards abundance (more words = better). Connections rewards accuracy (correct category = perfect score; wrong category = zero points for that group).

The Unique Value of Connections

Connections fills a puzzle niche that neither Wordle nor Spelling Bee occupies. It's specifically designed to test whether you can:

• Recognize multiple meanings
• Suppress dominant associations and activate secondary meanings
• Identify non-obvious patterns
• Think laterally and creatively
• Manage cognitive load while holding multiple hypotheses

This makes Connections intellectually different from other word games. You're not just knowing words (Spelling Bee) or guessing methodology (Wordle). You're understanding language at a deeper level.

Future Puzzle Predictions and Preparation

Based on patterns from previous puzzles, upcoming Connections games will likely feature:

January 2025 Predictions

• New Year's resolutions and goal-setting terminology
• Year-in-review references
• Cold weather and winter sports references
• Words related to beginnings and fresh starts

February 2025 Predictions

• Valentine's Day and love-related terminology
• Historical figures and events
• Words with romantic or emotional undertones
• Potentially homophones or wordplay involving names

March 2025 Predictions

• Spring and growth-related terminology
• NCAA basketball references (March Madness)
• Daylight savings time references
• Words related to change and renewal

To prepare for these upcoming patterns:

1. Learn more homophones and hidden syllables.
2. Review literary terms and writing-related vocabulary.
3. Keep current with cultural events and trends.
4. Practice identifying secondary meanings for common words.
5. Pay attention to how previous puzzles use seasonal themes.

The Bigger Picture: Why Connections Matters

Connections might seem like just another game, but it's actually an exercise in cognitive flexibility and pattern recognition. The skills you develop playing Connections transfer to:

Professional Problem-Solving

Recognizing hidden patterns and multiple meanings is crucial in research, analysis, writing, and strategy work. Connections trains you to think beyond surface-level information.

Creative Thinking

The lateral thinking required to solve Connections translates to creative work: writing, design, marketing, innovation. You learn to see connections others miss.

Language Mastery

Connections constantly exposes you to vocabulary, wordplay, and linguistic patterns. Players report improved writing, better puns, and deeper language understanding.

Cognitive Health

Regular puzzle-solving maintains cognitive flexibility, pattern recognition abilities, and memory. It's essentially a brain exercise that's been gamified to be enjoyable.

Game #928 is just one puzzle among thousands. But it represents the gold standard of what word puzzles can be: challenging, clever, occasionally frustrating, but ultimately rewarding. That's what makes Connections worth playing daily.

FAQ

What is NYT Connections and how does it differ from Wordle?

NYT Connections is a word puzzle game where you identify four groups of four words that share a specific connection. Unlike Wordle, which challenges you to guess a single target word, Connections requires categorical thinking and pattern recognition. You need to identify what the category is, not just find words that fit a pattern. The game allows four mistakes before losing, making it slightly more forgiving than Wordle's six-guess limit, but requires deeper understanding of language and semantics.

How do I solve the purple groups in Connections?

Purple groups require either specialized knowledge, linguistic pattern recognition, or reverse-engineering from outliers. The strategy is to identify the word that seems most out of place (often a person's name, place name, or color), then consider what non-obvious connection it might have to the other words. Purple groups frequently use hidden homophones, solfege syllables, double meanings, or highly specific cultural references. When stuck, use your four allowed mistakes strategically on groups you're uncertain about, and let process of elimination help you determine the final group.

What is purple prose and why did it appear in game #928?

Purple prose is a literary term referring to writing that is excessively ornate, flowery, and focused on style over substance. In game #928, the yellow group consisted of synonyms for overly ornate writing: EXCESSIVE, FLOWERY, MELODRAMATIC, and PURPLE (as in purple prose). Most players initially categorize PURPLE as a color, making it a classic misdirection word. The puzzle designer exploits this dominant association, requiring you to suppress the color meaning and activate the literary terminology meaning.

What are solfege syllables and how did they create a connection in game #928?

Solfege is a music education system using syllables (Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Ti, Do) to teach pitch recognition and help musicians identify intervals. In game #928's purple group, all four words contained hidden solfege syllables: LAREDO contains LA, RE, DO; MIRE contains MI, RE; RETIRE contains RE, TI, RE; and SOLTI contains SOL, TI. The connection wasn't about what these words meant, but about what syllables they contained. This connection requires either music education knowledge or the willingness to analyze word composition phonetically.

How many mistakes can you make in Connections before losing?

You can make up to four mistakes in Connections before losing the game. This means you can have one incorrect group out of the four groups you identify. Once you make a fifth mistake, the game ends. This allows for strategic play where confident groups are guessed first, and uncertain groups are either analyzed further or determined through process of elimination once the other three groups are solved.

What is the best strategy for maintaining a long winning streak?

The best strategies for maintaining winning streaks include: (1) spending 90-120 seconds analyzing the board before making any guesses to identify potential misdirection, (2) only guessing groups you're 100% confident about, (3) deliberately questioning secondary meanings and hidden connections rather than accepting dominant associations, (4) using process of elimination for the final group if the first three groups are certain, and (5) not rushing due to time pressure or streak anxiety. Players who maintain 50+ game winning streaks typically spend 8-12 minutes on difficult puzzles and prioritize accuracy over speed.

How does seasonal timing affect Connections puzzle difficulty?

Connections puzzles published during holiday seasons tend to feature higher difficulty because serious players continue playing on holidays. December puzzles often include literary references, music knowledge, or cultural allusions. Similarly, January puzzles lean toward resolutions and new beginnings, March puzzles include NCAA basketball and spring themes, and summer puzzles reference vacations and outdoor activities. Understanding these seasonal patterns helps you anticipate the types of references and wordplay that will appear in upcoming puzzles.

What are the most common cognitive traps that break winning streaks?

The most common traps that end winning streaks are: (1) rushing due to time pressure or streak anxiety and guessing before fully analyzing, (2) grouping three solid words with one questionable fourth word without verifying the fourth word's fit, (3) missing secondary meanings due to dominant association bias, (4) pattern hallucination where you see a pattern that doesn't actually exist, and (5) sunk cost fallacy where previous time investment pressures you to guess even when uncertain. Addressing these traps requires conscious skepticism and willingness to take time, even when it feels inefficient.

How do I improve at Connections faster than just playing daily?

The fastest improvement comes from analyzing the puzzles you've already played rather than simply playing more puzzles. Keep a Connections journal noting which groups tricked you, what secondary meanings you learned, and which patterns you encountered. Review yesterday's puzzle after solving today's puzzle for reinforcement. Practice deliberately on puzzle types and vocabulary areas where you're weakest. Watch expert solvers' approaches on YouTube or through community discussions. This combination of deliberate practice, analysis, and spaced repetition produces better improvement than volume playing alone.

Conclusion: From Game #928 to Mastery

Game #928 represents everything that makes Connections brilliant and occasionally infuriating. It contained obvious entry points (the green CREATE/COIN/FASHION/MAKE UP group), moderate difficulty (the blue things with stems group), and genuine challenge (the purple solfege syllable group).

But more importantly, it demonstrated the principles that all Connections puzzles operate on: misdirection through dominant associations, hidden meanings that require reframing, pattern recognition that rewards lateral thinking, and carefully chosen words that seem random until the connection crystallizes.

Mastering Connections isn't about memorizing categories or building an exhaustive vocabulary (though both help). It's about training your brain to:

1. Question your first instinct. Your dominant association is often wrong.
2. See secondary meanings. Words have layers. Connections exploits those layers.
3. Recognize patterns at multiple levels. Connection can be literal, phonetic, semantic, conceptual, or linguistic.
4. Manage cognitive load. You're holding multiple hypotheses simultaneously, evaluating each against the group requirements.
5. Think like the puzzle designer. Why were these four words chosen? What trap does this combination create?

Every puzzle you play is training. You're not just earning a streak. You're developing pattern recognition abilities that transfer to creative thinking, professional problem-solving, language mastery, and cognitive flexibility.

The games will continue arriving every day at midnight your time zone. Some will feel easy. Some will frustrate you. But if you approach each puzzle with curiosity rather than urgency, you'll find that Connections becomes increasingly rewarding.

Start with the strategies outlined here. Practice the framework. Build your pattern recognition skills. Learn from your mistakes. And remember: the goal isn't just to win. It's to understand why each connection works. That understanding is what separates casual players from consistent solvers.

Game #929 is coming tomorrow. And then #930, #931, and thousands more. Each one is an opportunity to refine your thinking, challenge your assumptions, and discover new patterns.

That's what makes Connections worth playing.

Key Takeaways

• Game #928's purple group used solfege syllables hidden within words (LAREDO contains LA, RE, DO; MIRE contains MI, RE; RETIRE contains RE, TI, RE; SOLTI contains SOL, TI), requiring music education knowledge or phonetic analysis to solve.
• The yellow group featured PURPLE as a literary term meaning ornate prose, not as a color, demonstrating how Connections exploits dominant association bias to create misdirection.
• Strategic solving involves 120 seconds of analysis before guessing, identifying outlier words that signal harder groups, and verifying that all four words share a unified category before guessing.
• Connections fills a unique cognitive niche between Wordle's singular deduction and Spelling Bee's vocabulary breadth, specifically training categorical pattern recognition and lateral thinking abilities.
• Long-term success maintaining 50+ game winning streaks correlates with deliberate practice focusing on puzzle analysis rather than volume playing, combined with conscious suppression of dominant word meanings.

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