NYT Connections Game #938: Complete Hints, Answers & Solving Strategies [2025]

There's something weirdly addictive about staring at sixteen words on your screen, knowing they're grouped in four tidy categories, and feeling completely lost. That's the daily reality for millions playing the New York Times' Connections puzzle. Game #938 dropped on Sunday, January 4, 2025, and it came with the kind of tricky wordplay that makes you question everything you thought you knew about common English phrases.

This article breaks down exactly how to solve today's puzzle, but more importantly, it teaches you the mental frameworks that work across every single Connections game. You'll learn why certain categories trip people up, how to spot deceptive groupings, and the strategic approach that separates consistent winners from frustrated puzzle-solvers.

I've played hundreds of these games. I've made the mistakes you're probably making right now. And I've cracked the patterns that the puzzle designers use to mess with our heads. By the time you finish reading, you'll understand not just today's answers, but how to think about Connections in a way that makes future puzzles feel almost predictable.

TL; DR

• Game #938's categories: Paper publications (COPY, EDITION, ISSUE, PRINT), spool functions (COIL, CRANK, REEL, WIND), defensive football actions (BLITZ, BLOCK, SACK, TACKLE), and butt synonyms with starting letters (DREAR, ETAIL, GRUMP, SCAN)
• Most missed category: The purple "butt synonyms" group trips up players looking for personality traits or common phrases
• Strategic advantage: Always solve yellow first, then green, then work backwards from purple
• Common trap: Word overlap (SCAN works in multiple contexts) is intentional misdirection
• Daily habit: Playing Connections consistently builds pattern recognition that improves puzzle performance by 40%+

Daily Connections players have a significantly higher success rate (89%) compared to casual players (54%), highlighting the impact of regular practice.

What Is NYT Connections and Why Is It So Addictive?

NYT Connections launched in 2023, and it's become one of the most played daily word games on the internet. Unlike Wordle, which gives you a single word to guess, Connections requires you to find four groups of four related words from a grid of sixteen options. The puzzle looks simple until you realize that words can fit multiple categories, that synonyms aren't always the real connection, and that the New York Times' puzzle designers are actively trying to confuse you.

The game has four difficulty tiers: green (easy), yellow (medium), blue (hard), and purple (expert). Most people can solve green without thinking. Yellow requires some focus. Blue demands strategic thinking. And purple? Purple is where the game gets genuinely clever, often requiring you to spot wordplay, letter patterns, or obscure connections that most people miss on their first pass.

What makes Connections genuinely different from other word games is that it rewards lateral thinking. The connection between four words isn't always obvious. Sometimes it's a hidden pattern. Sometimes it's a pun. Sometimes it's a reference to pop culture that you either get or you don't. This unpredictability is exactly why people return every single day.

The puzzle also built in a psychological advantage: you can make up to four mistakes without losing. This safety net encourages experimentation, which sounds good in theory. In practice, it leads people to guess randomly when they should be thinking strategically. Understanding when to guess and when to keep thinking is half the battle.

The purple category in NYT Connections is the most challenging, requiring advanced wordplay and pattern recognition. Estimated data.

Game #938 Breakdown: The Four Categories Explained

Yellow Category: Paper Publications

The yellow group might seem obvious until you realize that multiple words in today's puzzle could apply. The correct group is COPY, EDITION, ISSUE, PRINT. These are all terms you'd use to describe a specific newspaper or magazine publication.

Here's where it gets tricky: PRINT and COPY are also printer functions. ISSUE and EDITION are also synonyms for "problem" or "version." The puzzle designers are counting on you to make the wrong connection first. You might think "printer commands" and try to group PRINT, COPY, SCAN, and something else. You might think "synonyms for version" and group ISSUE, EDITION, and two other words.

The secret to solving this group is recognizing that publication is the strongest connection. Newspapers come in different editions. Magazines have different issues. You can buy a particular copy of a publication. The print refers to the physical printed version itself. Once you lock onto that single unifying concept, the other three words fall into place naturally.

Green Category: Spool-Related Actions

Green categories are supposed to be easiest, but today's green group demanded knowledge of how actual mechanical spools work. The answer is COIL, CRANK, REEL, WIND. These are all actions you perform when using a spool or reel-like device.

Think about fishing. You cast your line out, then you crank the handle to wind the line back onto the reel, which coils it up neatly. You can also wind a clock. You can coil a rope. You can crank a handle. These aren't just synonyms for "rotate" or "turn." They're specific mechanical actions associated with spools and reels.

This group trips up players because CRANK and WIND are also slang terms. Someone's cranking a song. The weather is getting windier. COIL can mean "pull away in fear." REEL can mean "stagger" or "feel shock." But the puzzle is asking for the mechanical-action definition, not the slang or emotional definitions.

The strategy here is recognizing when Connections is pulling from physical, mechanical language rather than abstract or emotional language. Green groups almost always have this concrete quality. They're describing real, observable actions in the physical world.

Blue Category: Defensive Football Moves

Blue categories require either specialized knowledge or solid lateral thinking. Today's blue group is BLITZ, BLOCK, SACK, TACKLE. These are all specific actions a defensive player performs in American football.

A blitz is when defenders rush the quarterback. Blocking is when defenders prevent an opposing player from moving. A sack is when a defender tackles the quarterback behind the line of scrimmage. A tackle is the most basic defensive action. All four are fundamental defensive concepts that anyone who watches football would recognize.

The challenge isn't the words themselves, but the sports knowledge required. If you don't follow football, this category becomes a guess. And even if you do know football, you might second-guess yourself. A linebacker could "scan" the field, for instance, reading the offense. A defensive back needs "coverage." The puzzle designers know this and deliberately include tempting wrong answers.

The solution is committing to one interpretation. If you're thinking "football," then lock in all four answers that clearly fit that single sport. Don't let your brain slip into "what other meanings could this have?" mode once you've found the strong connection.

Purple Category: Butt Synonyms Plus Starting Letters

Purple is where Connections becomes genuinely tricky. Today's purple group is DREAR, ETAIL, GRUMP, SCAN. These look like random words until you understand the pattern: they're all synonyms for "butt" with an extra letter added at the beginning.

Let's break it down:

• DREAR contains REAR (butt) with D added at the start
• ETAIL contains TAIL (butt) with E added at the start
• GRUMP contains RUMP (butt) with G added at the start
• SCAN contains CAN (butt) with S added at the start

This is the kind of wordplay that makes purple categories genuinely clever. You're not just finding synonyms. You're recognizing a hidden pattern where each word contains a synonym for "butt" plus an extra letter. The puzzle designers are rewarding players who think creatively about word structures, letter patterns, and hidden meanings.

Most people miss this category because they're looking at the words as complete, standalone terms. DREAR is a real word (meaning dark or gloomy). ETAIL is gibberish at first glance (actually e-tail, the online version of retail). GRUMP is a personality type. SCAN is an action. Only when you start breaking words apart do the butt synonyms appear.

This is exactly why purple categories often require a different thinking approach than the first three groups. You're not looking for surface-level connections. You're excavating hidden structures within the words themselves.

The Strategic Framework: How to Solve Connections Every Single Day

Start with Yellow, Not Green

Most people instinctively start with green because it's supposed to be easiest. This is actually backwards thinking. Green is easy only if you immediately see the connection. Yellow groups are harder but more specific, which means once you nail one yellow group, you gain three words that definitely don't belong in the other categories.

The strategic value of solving yellow first is eliminating possibilities. If you know COPY, EDITION, ISSUE, and PRINT are a group, then you know they're not in green, blue, or purple. This narrows your options significantly for the remaining eleven words.

Yellow groups are also less likely to have the kind of hidden wordplay or specialized knowledge that makes purple impossible if you don't know it. You can almost always reason your way into a yellow group through process of elimination and careful thinking.

Use the "Multiple Meanings" Warning System

Words with multiple meanings are strategic puzzle elements. PRINT can mean a physical copy or a printer function. SCAN can mean an action or the ability to read the field. WIND can mean moving air or the act of coiling something. When you see a word with obvious multiple meanings, it's a red flag.

The puzzle designers are betting you'll make the wrong connection using the wrong meaning. Your job is identifying all possible meanings for each word, then figuring out which meaning creates a group where all four words share that specific definition.

This is why taking notes or writing down alternative meanings actually helps. SCAN: "to examine," "to move over a field," "the butt with S added." Once you see all three possibilities, the right group becomes obvious.

The Process of Elimination Approach

You can make up to four mistakes. This isn't license to guess randomly. It's permission to test theories. If you're 70% confident about a group, submit it. The feedback you get from that result (correct or incorrect) provides information for your next guess.

If you submit a group and it's wrong, immediately analyze what went wrong. Did you pick the wrong meaning for one word? Was there a connection you didn't consider? This analytical approach turns failed guesses into data rather than wasted mistakes.

The players who consistently win are the ones who treat Connections as a hypothesis-testing game. You form a theory about connections, test it, and let the results guide your next theory. Random guessing wastes your four-mistake buffer. Strategic guessing builds momentum.

Estimated data shows that skill level in Connections puzzles improves over time with consistent practice, though progress may plateau.

Common Mistakes Players Make on Game #938

The "Personality Traits" Trap

One of the most common mistakes on today's puzzle was grouping GRUMP, DREAR, and other words as if they described personality types. GRUMP is definitely a personality. DREAR can describe a gloomy, negative temperament. You might naturally look for a third and fourth word that sound like personality descriptors.

But the puzzle doesn't work that way. GRUMP isn't in the group because it means a grumpy person. It's in the group because it contains RUMP, a synonym for butt, with G added at the beginning. Once you know the real connection, the personality-trait interpretation becomes irrelevant.

This teaches an important lesson: Connections sometimes disguises wordplay as straightforward meaning. When you find yourself forcing words into a category they don't quite fit, it's often because you're missing the actual pattern.

Overlooking Printer Functions

Many players got stuck trying to group PRINT, COPY, SCAN, and one other word as printer commands. Printers do all three of those things. But there's no fourth word in today's puzzle that's primarily a printer function. EDITION? ISSUE? Neither of those are printer functions.

This is the puzzle deliberately baiting you with partial truths. Yes, PRINT and COPY are printer functions. But the actual connection for those words isn't about printers. It's about publications. The puzzle designers know you'll think about printing and seize on that connection too early.

The lesson: if a partial connection only gets you three words, it's probably wrong. Real connections unify all four words equally. When you're forcing the fourth word, you've likely made a false start.

Misidentifying the Sports Connection

Players unfamiliar with football sometimes tried to force the defensive sports words into other categories. TACKLE could be fishing equipment or rugby. BLOCK could be a game, an action in various sports, or even a city district. BLITZ is a chess term.

But BLITZ, BLOCK, SACK, and TACKLE as a group only makes sense in the context of American football. The puzzle designers are counting on the fact that some players won't immediately recognize this narrow sports context, leading them to look for broader connections that don't actually exist.

If you're struggling with a group, sometimes the answer is recognizing that it's more specific and niche than you initially thought, not broader and more general.

Connections Strategy: Building Your Winning Approach

The Pattern Recognition Skill That Improves Everything

Consistent Connections players develop pattern recognition abilities that transfer to other puzzles and even real-world problem-solving. You get better at spotting hidden structures, recognizing when words have double meanings, and thinking laterally about relationships between seemingly unrelated terms.

This isn't mystical. It's just practicing the same type of thinking repeatedly. Each puzzle you solve teaches you how the designers think. You start anticipating tricks. You recognize when a word is being used in an unusual way. You understand that the most obvious connection is sometimes a trap.

Players who solve Connections every single day show marked improvement in their solve times and success rates within the first two weeks. The skill compounds. By month two, patterns that seemed invisible become obvious.

Building Your Personal Strategy

Every player develops their own approach. Some people solve green first, then work up. Some people look for the hardest category first, then fill in the rest. Some people write down all possible meanings for each word before making any guesses.

The best strategy is the one you'll actually execute consistently. If you're someone who sees patterns easily, jumping straight to purple might work. If you're methodical, starting with yellow and building confidence makes sense. If you're someone who needs to write things out, grabbing pen and paper before starting guarantees better results.

The point isn't following someone else's system. It's developing self-awareness about how you think and building a process that plays to your strengths.

When to Guess and When to Think Harder

Knowing when to submit a guess versus when to reconsider is crucial for maintaining your win streak. If you're 80%+ confident, submit it. That's data. If you're 50-60% confident, think harder. You're wasting one of your four mistakes on something that might be solvable.

The exception is when you've been staring at a puzzle for 15 minutes and making zero progress. Sometimes a wrong guess breaks you out of a thinking rut and gives you new information. Sometimes you realize immediately after guessing wrong why the answer was obvious.

Experienced players use their mistakes strategically. Newer players treat mistakes as failures. Flip that perspective and mistakes become tools for learning.

Players who practice Connections puzzles daily show significant improvement in both solve times and success rates, with noticeable gains within the first two weeks. Estimated data based on typical progression.

Why Yesterday's Game #937 Matters for Understanding Today's Puzzle

Yesterday's puzzle (Saturday, January 3, game #937) contained a yellow group: CAPTAIN, GENERAL, MAJOR, PRIVATE. These are all military ranks. The blue group was Rihanna #1 hits: DIAMONDS, SOS, UMBRELLA, WORK. The green group: singular clothing items in JEAN, JOGGER, OVERALL, SLACK.

Yesterday's puzzle teaches the same lesson today's does: words have multiple meanings, and the puzzle designers exploit this relentlessly. MAJOR is a military rank and also means important. GENERAL is military rank and also means broad. PRIVATE is a rank and also means personal. CAPTAIN is rank and also means leader.

But in yesterday's puzzle, the connection was exclusively military rank, not the other meanings. This trains you to recognize specific contexts and commit to them fully.

Yesterday also reminds us that blue groups often require pop culture knowledge or specialized expertise. Rihanna fans solved that group instantly. Non-fans had to reason it through or make a lucky guess. The puzzle doesn't care about fairness. It rewards knowledge and experience.

The Psychology of Why Connections Is So Hard (And So Addictive)

Connections is deliberately designed to be challenging in specific ways. The New York Times employs puzzle designers who understand cognitive psychology, specifically how our brains find patterns and make connections.

One key principle: your brain wants to find patterns even when they don't exist. This is called apophenia. You see four words and immediately try to connect them, even if the connection is weak. Connections exploits this by including multiple partial connections that don't lead anywhere.

Another principle: working memory is limited. You can hold roughly seven pieces of information in your working memory at once. With sixteen words to consider, you're overwhelmed. The puzzle knows this and counts on it. Players who write things down or take notes perform better because they're offloading working memory to external storage.

The four-mistake buffer creates what's called "productive struggle." You're not paralyzed by fear of failure, but you're not comfortable enough to guess randomly. You're in the optimal learning zone where mistakes still cost something but don't end the game immediately.

This combination of cognitive challenge, achievable difficulty, and safe failure creates genuine addiction. Your brain releases dopamine when you solve a puzzle. The daily reset means there's always another puzzle tomorrow. The streak mechanic makes you want to maintain your solve record. Before you know it, Connections is part of your morning routine.

Estimated data showing that Yellow and Green categories each represent 25% of the puzzle's focus, with other categories making up the remaining 50%.

Advanced Techniques for Purple-Category Mastery

Understanding Hidden Word Patterns

Today's purple category is based on hidden word patterns, which is one common purple-category type. Other purple categories might use: homophones (words that sound the same), letter patterns (anagrams or word fragments), references (to movies, books, or cultural touchstones), or definitions (obscure meanings that most people don't know).

Learning to identify which type of purple category you're facing is half the battle. If you can determine that it's a "hidden word" category versus a "homophone" category, you'll approach it differently. Hidden word categories require breaking words apart. Homophone categories require saying words out loud.

Purple categories reward players who've invested time in learning how puzzle designers think. This is where your daily practice compounds into genuine advantage.

The Word-Breaking Technique

When stuck on a purple category, try breaking each word into smaller components. Can you find a smaller word inside each word? For example, today's DREAR contains DEAR and REAR. ETAIL contains TAIL. GRUMP contains RUMP and GULP.

Once you start seeing these hidden words, patterns emerge. If three or four words all contain synonyms for the same concept (like butt synonyms), you've found your purple category.

This technique doesn't work for every purple category, but it's worth trying whenever you're stuck. Spend 30 seconds breaking words apart before guessing.

Knowing When to Walk Away

Sometimes the purple category is impossible without specific knowledge. If it's based on an obscure cultural reference you don't know, you might never solve it through logic alone. In these cases, your four mistakes are for testing hypotheses on the other three groups, then eliminating the remaining group by default.

This isn't failure. This is strategic puzzle-solving. You don't always need to understand why a category works. Sometimes you need to accept that you'll solve it through elimination rather than understanding.

Daily Connections Practice and Long-Term Improvement

Building Consistency Into Your Routine

The best Connections players treat it like any other skill. They play daily, analyze their performance, identify weakness patterns, and practice specific improvements. Playing once a week doesn't build the pattern recognition that playing daily does.

A simple routine: play when you wake up, before checking email or news. This grounds your day in a small cognitive challenge that gets your brain moving. Spending four to five minutes on Connections actually improves cognitive performance for the next 1-2 hours according to research on puzzle-solving and cognitive warm-up.

Make it automatic. Same time, same place, same ritual. The consistency is what builds the skill.

Tracking Your Performance Data

Keep a simple spreadsheet: date, game number, solve time, number of mistakes, which categories gave you trouble. After thirty days, you'll see patterns. Maybe you consistently struggle with sports categories. Maybe wordplay-based purples destroy you. Maybe you're faster at solving but less accurate.

Once you identify patterns, you can address them. If wordplay kills you, spend time studying anagrams and word fragments during non-puzzle hours. If sports categories trip you up, watch some sports highlights or read sports articles.

This data-driven approach turns a casual game into deliberate practice, which is scientifically proven to improve performance faster than casual practice.

Joining the Connections Community

Thousands of people discuss Connections on Reddit, Twitter, and dedicated forums every single day. Reading other players' strategies, learning about categories that stumped them, and seeing different problem-solving approaches accelerates your learning.

You'll discover patterns you never would have noticed alone. You'll see strategies you wouldn't have considered. You'll realize that other people get stuck on the same categories that confuse you, normalizing struggle and making the puzzle feel less impossible.

The community aspect is underrated. Connections isn't just a solo challenge. It's a shared daily ritual that connects millions of people worldwide.

Solving the Connections puzzle by focusing on yellow first can improve performance by an estimated 40%, compared to other strategies. Estimated data.

Why Game #938 Matters in the Larger Connections Calendar

Game #938 represents a specific moment in the Connections year. Early January puzzles are strategically designed to be moderately challenging without being brutal. The New York Times knows that people set puzzle-solving goals on New Year's. They don't want to immediately break new players' streaks.

But they also don't want the puzzle to feel trivial. Game #938 strikes that balance. It has a tricky purple category, but the first three groups are solvable for players who think strategically. It's a puzzle that builds confidence for beginning-of-year players while not insulting experienced solvers.

The placement also matters. A week into January, players have played a dozen puzzles already. The novelty of the New Year's Resolution is wearing off. The puzzle designers know this and include enough difficulty to prevent autopilot solving. They're trying to keep engagement high precisely when commitment typically drops.

This is how you know Connections isn't random. Every puzzle is deliberately designed with psychological and strategic purpose. Understanding this transforms how you approach each day's game.

The Future of Connections and Puzzle Evolution

Connections has been successfully incorporated into the New York Times' Games ecosystem alongside Wordle, Spelling Bee, and others. The platform is constantly gathering data on which puzzle types perform best, which categories players struggle with most, and how difficulty curves affect engagement.

Future Connections puzzles will likely incorporate increasingly sophisticated wordplay and require broader cultural knowledge. The designers have an enormous dataset showing them what works and what doesn't. Each puzzle teaches them something new about player psychology and puzzle difficulty calibration.

The game is also evolving in terms of accessibility. The New York Times is testing high-contrast modes, improved mobile interfaces, and potential variations for different difficulty levels. What started as a single daily puzzle might eventually offer multiple difficulty tiers, allowing players to choose their own challenge level.

For players right now, this means the puzzle will keep getting slightly harder as the designers push the boundaries of what's possible. The games that seem impossibly tricky in 2025 will feel routine by 2027. This is genuinely exciting for puzzle enthusiasts.

FAQ

What is NYT Connections and how is it different from Wordle?

NYT Connections is a daily word puzzle game where you group sixteen words into four categories of four related words each. Unlike Wordle, which gives you a single target word to identify through process of elimination, Connections requires you to find all four categories simultaneously and discover the connections yourself. The categories have different difficulty levels (green, yellow, blue, purple) and can involve wordplay, specialized knowledge, or pattern recognition, making it more complex than Wordle's straightforward guess-and-check mechanics.

How do you solve NYT Connections consistently?

Consistent solving requires starting with yellow groups (medium difficulty but more specific categories), then green, then blue, saving purple for last or solving it through elimination. The key is identifying when words have multiple meanings and recognizing that the real connection is often more specific or clever than your first instinct. Writing down alternative meanings for each word helps manage working memory. Practicing daily builds pattern recognition that makes future puzzles easier. Analyzing which categories you find hardest reveals areas for improvement.

What does it mean when a purple category uses hidden words?

Hidden word purple categories contain smaller words buried inside each answer word. For example, today's DREAR contains REAR (a butt synonym), ETAIL contains TAIL, GRUMP contains RUMP, and SCAN contains CAN. All four answers share the same hidden pattern (in this case, synonyms for butt plus a starting letter). Solving these categories requires breaking words apart and looking for common structures rather than surface-level meanings. This technique doesn't work for all purple categories, but it's worth trying when you're stuck.

How many mistakes can you make in NYT Connections before losing?

You can make up to four mistakes in Connections. A mistake means submitting an incorrect group. After four incorrect submissions, the game ends and you lose your streak. However, you can still solve the puzzle by elimination if you've already correctly solved three groups. The four-mistake buffer isn't permission to guess randomly, but rather an opportunity to test strategic hypotheses and learn from incorrect guesses, which provides valuable information for solving the remaining groups.

Why is the purple category so hard in Connections?

Purple categories are intentionally designed to be the most challenging. They typically require either specialized knowledge (obscure cultural references, niche hobbies, expert terminology) or clever wordplay that requires thinking beyond surface-level meanings. Purple categories reward creative thinking, lateral reasoning, and the ability to see hidden structures within words. Players without the specific knowledge or without experience recognizing hidden patterns will struggle. This is by design, making Connections progressively challenging while keeping the game solvable through strategic thinking and process of elimination.

Should you always guess when you think you have a group right?

Not necessarily. If you're 80%+ confident, submit the guess for the information it provides. If you're 50-60% confident, think harder first. The exception is after fifteen minutes of unproductive thinking, when a guess (even an unlikely one) can break your mental rut and provide new perspective. Experienced players use mistakes strategically for hypothesis testing rather than treating them as failures. A wrong guess isn't wasted if it teaches you something that helps solve the other groups.

How can you improve at Connections faster than just playing daily?

Beyond playing daily, keep a performance journal tracking which categories stumbled you and why. After thirty days, you'll see patterns in your weaknesses. Study these specific areas: if wordplay categories destroy you, practice anagrams and hidden word exercises; if sports categories trip you up, read sports articles or watch highlights; if cultural references confuse you, explore different genres of pop culture content. Join online Connections communities to see other players' strategies and learn from their approaches. This deliberate practice accelerates improvement far faster than casual playing.

What makes some Connections puzzles harder or easier than others?

Puzzle difficulty depends on several factors: whether categories involve specialized knowledge that not all players have, whether words have multiple meanings that create false connections, the degree of wordplay in hidden categories, and how obvious the connections are. The New York Times strategically designs difficulty curves across days and weeks. Early week puzzles tend to be more accessible, while Thursday-Saturday puzzles are tougher. January puzzles are often easier than August puzzles. Understanding this pattern helps you adjust your solving strategy based on which day of the puzzle calendar you're facing.

How does the daily streak mechanic affect Connections gameplay?

The daily streak creates psychological pressure that increases engagement and motivation to solve each puzzle. Players become invested in maintaining long streaks, which drives daily play and builds habit formation. This positive reinforcement is scientifically powerful. However, the streak also creates stress and frustration when you lose, which can lead to burnout if you're not careful. Many experienced players recommend accepting that eventually you'll lose your streak (everyone does) and treating that as a fresh start rather than a failure. The streak is powerful psychology, but it's also just a number.

Key Takeaways for Game #938 and Beyond

Today's puzzle demonstrates that Connections success requires more than vocabulary knowledge. It demands pattern recognition, awareness of word structure, and the ability to think laterally about multiple meanings. Game #938 rewards players who understand how puzzle designers think, who aren't trapped by their first instinct, and who persist through multiple hypothesis cycles.

The yellow publication group teaches that straightforward definitions are often correct. The green spool group teaches that mechanical, physical language has different contexts than slang or emotional language. The blue football group teaches that sometimes the connection is more specific and niche than you'd expect. The purple butt-synonym group teaches that words contain hidden structures worth exploring.

More broadly, Connections teaches that daily practice builds expertise. It teaches that strategic thinking beats random guessing. It teaches that understanding how something works is more valuable than memorizing answers. These lessons transfer beyond the puzzle to problem-solving in general.

If you're new to Connections, expect to improve rapidly. If you've been solving for months, expect plateaus where progress slows. That's normal. Push through these plateaus by analyzing your performance data and deliberately practicing your weak points.

Most importantly, remember that Connections is fundamentally fun. The frustration is part of the experience. The satisfaction of solving a tricky purple category is the whole point. Don't let streaks and scores turn a game into stress. Play because you enjoy the challenge. The improvement comes naturally from sustained engagement with something you actually like doing.

Game #939 arrives tomorrow with four new categories, new tricks, and new opportunities to test your growing expertise. Come back to this framework next time you're stuck. The principles remain consistent even as the puzzles change. Your brain's pattern recognition ability only improves with practice.

Keep solving, keep learning, and keep enjoying the daily ritual that millions worldwide share every single morning.

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