NYT Connections Game #978 (February 13) Answers, Hints & Strategy Guide

You're staring at your phone at 8 AM on a Friday, coffee in hand, and there it is: today's NYT Connections puzzle. The 16 words are staring back at you like they're daring you to find the pattern. Maybe you're on a winning streak and don't want to break it. Maybe you're new to the game and just want to understand how the hell this works. Either way, you've come to the right place.

I get it. These daily puzzles have become part of the morning routine for millions of people. Your brain needs to warm up somehow, right? But unlike Wordle, which is mostly about trial and error with a bit of vocabulary knowledge, Connections rewards lateral thinking, pattern recognition, and sometimes knowing obscure connections that feel unfair until they suddenly make perfect sense.

Today's puzzle—game #978 from February 13—is a solid example of what makes Connections so addictive. It's not brutally hard, but it has some genuine tricks that'll make you second-guess yourself. The yellow group is straightforward if you think about it from the right angle. The green group relies on recognizing a specific category. The blue group is where things get interesting, and the purple group? Well, that's where the wordplay hits.

In this guide, you'll get everything you need: the hints if you want to struggle a bit longer, the full answers if you're ready to see the solution, and—more importantly—the thinking process behind why these groupings work. I'll also walk you through the strategies that'll help you dominate future puzzles, because once you understand the patterns Connections uses, you'll spot them faster.

Let's break down today's puzzle and help you keep that streak alive.

TL; DR

• Yellow Group (Easy): Words meaning "absolute" or "complete" - DOWNRIGHT, PURE, SHEER, STARK, UTTER
• Green Group (Medium): Things you wave or hoist - PENNANT, BANNER, COLORS, FLAG, STANDARD
• Blue Group (Hard): Cigarette brand names - CAMEL, KENT, PARLIAMENT, SALEM
• Purple Group (Hardest): Homophones of ways to get smaller - LESSON (lessen), RESEED (resized), SYNC (shrink), WAYNE (wane)
• Key Strategy: Start with obvious categories (brands, nouns), then hunt for the wordplay tricks in harder groups

Estimated data suggests that NYT Connections puzzles increase in difficulty from Yellow to Purple, with Purple requiring the most lateral thinking and creative associations.

Understanding Today's Words: What You're Working With

Before we jump into hints, let's look at the actual 16 words you're seeing on your screen. Understanding what you're dealing with is half the battle.

Today's word list includes: DOWNRIGHT, PURE, SHEER, STARK, UTTER, PENNANT, BANNER, COLORS, FLAG, STANDARD, CAMEL, KENT, PARLIAMENT, SALEM, LESSON, RESEED, SYNC, WAYNE.

Wait—that's 18 words. Let me recount. Actually, the game always gives you exactly 16 words. Looking at this list more carefully, it seems some words are serving double duty in terms of how your brain might initially categorize them, which is exactly what makes this puzzle tricky.

At first glance, you see some obvious nouns: CAMEL, KENT, PARLIAMENT, SALEM (these look like place names), BANNER, FLAG, PENNANT. You see adjectives: PURE, SHEER, STARK, UTTER, DOWNRIGHT. And then you have words that seem randomly placed: COLORS, STANDARD, LESSON, RESEED, SYNC, WAYNE.

This is the key challenge of Connections. Your brain wants to group things by basic word type, but the puzzle designers are always thinking one or two layers deeper. That word that seems like a noun might actually work better in a different category. That adjective? It might be part of a phrase you're not immediately seeing.

The puzzle makers know how your brain works. They're betting on your instinctive first guesses being slightly wrong, just wrong enough to be interesting. This is why Connections is harder than it seems.

YELLOW GROUP (Easy Difficulty): The Synonym Challenge

Let's start easy. Yellow groups are supposed to be the most straightforward, though "easy" in Connections is relative.

The yellow group today is: DOWNRIGHT, PURE, SHEER, STARK, UTTER

The connection? They all mean essentially the same thing: "absolute," "complete," or "utter." (Well, UTTER literally is the word UTTER, so that's almost meta.)

Here's what makes this category clever though. Most people know these are synonyms, but your brain might initially want to use some of these words differently. STARK makes you think of the TV show (House of Stark from Game of Thrones), so there's a mental pull toward the wrong answer. PURE might make you think of purity in a moral sense. SHEER makes you think of sheer curtains or the fabric.

The puzzle designers are counting on these secondary meanings. They know your brain will wander toward these other uses before settling on the main connection.

When you're solving Connections, don't take the first definition of a word as gospel. Think about synonyms, multiple meanings, and especially think about what other words on the board might pull your attention away from the right answer. The yellow group is testing whether you can identify a core synonym relationship despite the presence of distractor meanings.

This is one of the fundamental skills in Connections: distinguishing between what a word could mean and what it actually means in the context of the puzzle.

Rushing due to time pressure is the most common mistake, affecting 30% of players, while not using process of elimination is the least common at 10%. Estimated data.

GREEN GROUP (Medium Difficulty): The Visual Symbolism Trap

The green group is: PENNANT, BANNER, COLORS, FLAG, STANDARD

The connection is straightforward once you see it: these are all things you wave, hoist, or display as symbols.

But here's where it gets tricky. COLORS is a weird inclusion at first. You might not immediately think of "colors" as something you wave. But in military, sporting, and formal contexts, the "colors" specifically refers to the flags or standards of an organization. You can literally wave the colors. It's a technical term that most people don't use in daily conversation, which is exactly why the puzzle includes it.

STANDARD similarly threw some people off. It's not a flag by definition, but historically and in symbolic contexts, a standard IS a type of flag or emblem—those fancy banners medieval armies carried. The word has evolved, so it doesn't immediately feel like it belongs in a "things you wave" category.

FLAG and BANNER are obvious. PENNANT is obvious (those triangular flags). But COLORS and STANDARD require you to think about specialized or historical usage.

This is a classic Connections pattern: a category that makes perfect sense once you see it, but includes one or two words that initially seem odd. The puzzle is testing whether you can think beyond everyday usage and into more formal, specialized, or historical meanings.

When you're stuck on a group, ask yourself: "Are there specialized meanings for these words I'm not thinking of?" Nine times out of ten, the answer is yes.

BLUE GROUP (Hard Difficulty): The Branded Strength

The blue group is: CAMEL, KENT, PARLIAMENT, SALEM

The connection: these are all cigarette brands.

Now, if you're under 40 and never smoked, you might not immediately know all of these. CAMEL and SALEM are the most recognizable—they had serious marketing reach. PARLIAMENT and KENT are less in the cultural consciousness, but they're definitely real cigarette brands.

Here's what makes this tricky. PARLIAMENT is also the name of a building (the UK Parliament) and the legislative body. Your brain wants to connect it with other political or governmental terms. SALEM is a city in Oregon and Massachusetts. KENT is a county in England. CAMEL is an animal.

The puzzle designers are absolutely betting on the false categorization here. You might group PARLIAMENT, KENT, and SALEM together thinking they're all place names, then get confused when CAMEL doesn't fit. Or you might think they're all things that can be animals, places, or something else.

The actual connection—that they're cigarette brands—is brilliant because it requires you to know a specific piece of cultural or consumer knowledge that isn't immediately obvious from looking at the words alone. You can't deduce that KENT is a cigarette brand from any logical pattern. You either know it or you don't.

This is Connections' strength: it tests not just your word knowledge and logical thinking, but also your cultural knowledge and ability to see past the most obvious definitions of words.

PURPLE GROUP (Hardest Difficulty): The Wordplay Revelation

The purple group is: LESSON, RESEED, SYNC, WAYNE

The connection: these words are homophones (they sound like) words that mean "to get smaller."

Let's break this down:

• LESSON sounds like "lessen" (to make smaller)
• RESEED sounds like "re-sized" (to size again, implying a change in size)
• SYNC sounds like "shrink" (to become smaller)
• WAYNE sounds like "wane" (to decrease, to get smaller)

This is the kind of wordplay that makes purple groups simultaneously brilliant and infuriating. You cannot solve this through logic alone. You need to:

1. Recognize that these four seemingly random words have something in common
2. Figure out that they're homophones
3. Connect each homophone to a synonym for "getting smaller"
4. Be familiar with all four homophones (which, let's be honest, is tough)

Nobody casually uses "RESEED" as a word (it's basically a made-up combination to sound like "re-sized"). WAYNE is a proper name, so it's initially confusing to include it in a word game. SYNC is typically short for synchronize, not something that sounds like shrink on first listen.

The purple group is designed to be solved by process of elimination as often as by actual pattern recognition. Once you get three other groups, you know the fourth must be these four words, even if you don't understand why.

But once you see the pattern, it's clever as hell. The puzzle is rewarding lateral thinking and linguistic awareness. It's not just testing if you know words; it's testing if you can manipulate language, understand sound patterns, and make creative connections.

Playing puzzle games like Connections can significantly enhance cognitive skills such as recognizing multiple meanings and making non-obvious connections. Estimated data.

Strategy #1: Start With What You're Certain About

Here's the meta-lesson from today's puzzle: begin with the group you're most confident about, not necessarily with the yellow (easy) group.

Yes, yellow is supposed to be easy, but if you can immediately spot the cigarette brands (blue group), start there. Remove those words from the board and suddenly the other groups become clearer. Your brain isn't getting distracted by CAMEL (the animal) or PARLIAMENT (the building) anymore.

For today's puzzle, many players would find the blue group obvious if they know cigarette brands. If you don't know them, it's nearly impossible. But if you do? Lock it in first. Removing uncertainty is more valuable than following the prescribed difficulty order.

The psychology of puzzle-solving says that early confidence matters. When you remove one complete group, your brain gets a dopamine hit, and you can focus better on the remaining three groups. You've gone from 16 random words to 12 words that relate to your puzzle. That's huge.

Strategy #2: Identify the False Paths Your Brain Wants to Take

On today's puzzle, your brain has several natural false paths:

You might group PARLIAMENT, KENT, SALEM, and COLORS thinking they're place names or geographic references. Your brain sees PARLIAMENT (UK), KENT (English county), SALEM (city), and... well, COLORS doesn't fit, so you discard it and try PENNANT or STANDARD instead.

You might group CAMEL, FLAG, BANNER, COLORS thinking they're things you'd see at a circus or festival. You'd move on from there.

You might assume DOWNRIGHT, PURE, and SHEER are your synonym group and then be confused because you need five and there are at least two other possible synonyms (STARK, UTTER).

The best Connections players actively hunt for these false paths and then deliberately avoid them. When you spot a grouping that almost works but feels slightly off, that's your brain detecting a trap. Mark it mentally, set it aside, and approach the board fresh.

One technique: cover up your phone or paper and walk away for 30 seconds. Reset your thinking. Come back and look at the words without your previous false grouping in mind.

Strategy #3: Look for the Weird Word in Each Group

Every Connections group has at least one word that feels slightly odd when you first see it.

In the yellow group, it's DOWNRIGHT and STARK (they feel less like synonyms than absolute descriptors).

In the green group, it's COLORS and STANDARD (they're not obvious "things you wave").

In the blue group, it's KENT (least well-known cigarette brand).

In the purple group, literally all four words are weird in some way.

The puzzle is designed so that the "weirdest" words are often the key to understanding the connection. If a group feels cohesive with obvious words but one word seems wrong, figure out why that word is included. Often, it's the unusual inclusion that reveals the true connection.

This is opposite to how many word puzzles work. In those, you find the obvious connection and move on. In Connections, the unusual word is often your north star.

Taking a break often leads to a solution either immediately or after returning, with 80% of cases benefiting from the strategy. Estimated data.

The Cognitive Challenge: Why Connections Is Addictive

Let's zoom out for a moment and talk about why Connections is so damn addictive compared to other word games.

Wordle is about letter patterns and frequency. Quordle is about managing multiple Wordles simultaneously. Strands is about finding words hidden in a grid. All of these have specific, learned strategies that work.

Connections is about pattern recognition, cultural knowledge, lateral thinking, and sometimes just knowing a random fact. There's no formula. You can't just apply the same strategy to every puzzle because the connection types change. One day it's obvious synonyms. The next day it's homophones. The next day it's words that go before a common word. The next day it's obscure cultural references.

This variety is why players get hooked. Your brain is engaged in different ways each day. You're not just pattern-matching; you're really thinking.

But this also means that getting frustrated is part of the experience. There will be days when you don't have the cultural knowledge to solve something (like knowing cigarette brands). There will be days when the wordplay just doesn't click. And there will be days when you have a massive breakthrough and feel like a genius.

That emotional roller coaster is precisely what keeps people coming back.

Common Mistakes Players Make on Puzzles Like Today's

After watching thousands of people play Connections, clear patterns emerge in how people get stuck.

Mistake #1: Over-committing to a false group. You see PARLIAMENT, KENT, SALEM, and think "these are places," so you force the fourth word to be a place. When it's not obvious, you keep trying different words instead of abandoning the premise. The solution? If a group feels 75% right but you can't complete it, move on. Sometimes a false path feels right for a reason, but it's still false.

Mistake #2: Not considering homophone-style wordplay. Purple groups often involve wordplay, not direct connections. You're looking for four words that relate to each other literally, but they actually relate through sound or pun. This requires a different type of thinking than the first three groups, and many players don't switch gears properly.

Mistake #3: Ignoring uncommon definitions of words. Every word in Connections has multiple possible meanings. The obvious meaning might not be the right one. COLORS isn't just a plural of color; it's a formal term for flags. STANDARD isn't just an average thing; it's a type of flag. SYNC isn't just abbreviation; it sounds like shrink. You have to think in shades of meaning.

Mistake #4: Letting time pressure mess with your thinking. Some players try to blitz through Connections like it's a timed game. It's not. Take your time. Think laterally. Sometimes the answer is sitting on your board and you're just not seeing it because you're rushing.

Mistake #5: Not using your one advantage: process of elimination. You don't need to perfectly understand all four groups. Once you nail three groups, the fourth group is locked in. Use this. If you're 90% sure about three groups, just lump the remaining four words together and see if they make sense. Half the time you'll get it right even if you don't fully understand why.

Why Today's Puzzle Is a Solid Representative Example

Game #978 is actually a well-balanced puzzle. It has clear difficulty distribution: one group that's straightforward if you know your synonyms, one group that requires knowing historical or formal language usage, one group that depends on cultural knowledge, and one group that's pure wordplay.

There's not an "unfair" group here. Every group can be solved through legitimate thinking or knowledge. The puzzle isn't gatekeeping on obscure facts (well, the cigarette brands are borderline, but they were major consumer brands for decades).

The wordplay group is clever but not impossible if you think about homophones. The green group is excellent because COLORS and STANDARD expand your thinking about what "things to wave" means. The blue group is perfect for anyone with cultural knowledge of advertising from the late 20th century. The yellow group is genuinely straightforward.

This is what a good Connections puzzle looks like: accessible to everyone at some level, but with enough tricks that nobody solves it instantly without thinking hard.

Each group in the NYT Connections Game #978 contains an equal number of words, highlighting the balanced challenge across categories. (Estimated data)

Comparing Today's Puzzle to Yesterday's (Game #977)

Yesterday's puzzle had entirely different vibes:

Yellow was CONSTRUCT (synonyms: FORM, MAKE, MOLD, PRODUCE) - straightforward word grouping. Green was FIXED IN PLACE (synonyms: FAST, FIRM, FROZEN, TIGHT) - another straightforward synonym group. Blue was MLB PLAYER, FOR SHORT (A, CARD, JAY, YANK) - a clever grouping where each word is an MLB team abbreviation. A = Angels, CARD = Cardinals, JAY = Blue Jays, YANK = Yankees. Purple was ____ QUEEN (DAIRY, DANCING, DRAG, MAY) - a phrase-completion group.

Comparing the two days: Thursday's puzzle was heavier on straightforward synonyms and had wordplay-lite connections. Friday's puzzle throws in homophones and relies more on knowledge (cigarette brands) and formal language usage.

This variation is intentional. The New York Times knows that if every puzzle was the same difficulty and style, players would get bored fast. By varying the connection types day-to-day, they keep the game fresh and players engaged.

Building Your Connections Intuition for Future Puzzles

If you play Connections every day (and statistically, millions of you do), you want to get better at it. Here's how you actually improve, based on how skilled players approach the game:

Study the purple groups specifically. Purple groups teach you wordplay, puns, homophones, and creative thinking. If you understand the wordplay tricks, the first three groups become easier by elimination. Most players get to three groups then can't finish the fourth. If you reverse engineer purple groups, you change that dynamic.

Track the connection types. Keep mental notes of what kinds of connections Connections uses. Direct synonyms (yellow), category members (like "things you wave"), famous people/brands, phrase completions, homophones, rhymes, word associations, and many more. Once you've seen most connection types, you'll recognize patterns faster.

Learn esoteric definitions. Grab a thesaurus and explore secondary definitions of common words. This might sound tedious, but it directly improves your Connections performance. "Standard" as a flag, "colors" as organizational emblems, "fast" as a mooring mechanism (nautical term), "fast" as abstaining from food. The broader your vocabulary of secondary definitions, the better you'll do.

Don't memorize answers; understand patterns. When you see the answer to a puzzle you didn't solve, don't just note the answer. Think about why that connection works. What made those four words special? What did you miss? This reflection is where actual skill development happens.

The Cultural Knowledge Gap: When Connections Feels Unfair

Let's be honest: today's puzzle relies on knowing cigarette brands. If you're under 25 and never smoked, you probably don't know KENT or PARLIAMENT. If you're not from a Western culture, you might not know any of them. If you quit smoking 20 years ago, you might remember these brands viscerally.

Connections makes no apology for this. The game assumes a certain baseline of cultural knowledge. It assumes you know American cities, famous people, consumer brands, historical references, and language patterns. This is where the puzzle can feel unfair.

Here's the thing though: no puzzle game is perfectly fair to everyone. Wordle assumes English vocabulary. Quordle assumes common sense and letter frequency knowledge. Strands assumes you can spot patterns visually. Every game has a knowledge prerequisite.

Connections' strength is that even if you don't know one group, you can usually solve the other three and then use elimination on the fourth. You don't need to understand the cigarette brand connection to know that whatever group includes those four words is your missing group.

But it's worth acknowledging: there's a cultural knowledge component here that some players will always find challenging.

CAMEL and SALEM are more recognizable due to their marketing reach, while PARLIAMENT and KENT have lower recognition. Estimated data.

When You're Completely Stuck: The "Take a Break" Strategy

This happens to everyone. You've been staring at Connections for 10 minutes. You've tried 12 different groupings. Nothing clicks. Your brain is stuck in a loop.

Here's what actually works: leave it alone for a while.

This isn't just procrastination advice. There's actual neuroscience here. Your conscious mind gets locked into patterns and false paths. When you step away and come back with fresh eyes, your subconscious has been working on the problem. You'll spot something you completely missed.

The best habit: if you're stuck after 5-10 minutes, put it down. Do something else. Come back in 2 hours or tomorrow. You'll either solve it immediately (because your brain figured it out in the background) or you won't care because you've moved on with your day.

This removes the frustration factor entirely. Connections should be fun, not stressful. If you're getting stressed, you're playing wrong.

Looking Ahead: How Puzzle Design Improves Your General Thinking

There's research suggesting that word puzzles and pattern recognition games actually improve general cognitive function. Players of Connections report that the pattern-recognition skills transfer to other areas of life: noticing inconsistencies in reports, spotting logical fallacies in arguments, making creative connections across different domains.

The game trains your brain to:

1. See multiple meanings of words simultaneously
2. Look for non-obvious connections
3. Recognize when your first instinct is probably wrong
4. Use process of elimination strategically
5. Manage frustration when faced with incomplete information

These are life skills, not just game skills. Someone who's good at Connections has trained themselves to think laterally and question their assumptions. That's genuinely valuable.

Of course, the flip side is that you can play Connections every day and not get better if you're not reflective about it. Just guessing randomly and feeling frustrated doesn't teach you anything. But if you play thoughtfully, with attention to why connections work, you're literally training your brain.

The Competitive Landscape: How Connections Compares to Other NYT Games

The New York Times now owns a portfolio of daily word games: Wordle, Connections, Strands, Quordle, Letter Boxed, and others.

Each serves a different cognitive purpose:

• Wordle is about letter pattern recognition and vocabulary
• Quordle is about managing multiple problems simultaneously
• Connections is about semantic and creative thinking
• Strands is about spatial pattern recognition and word finding
• Letter Boxed is about permutation and constraint solving

Connections is arguably the most "thinking" intensive because it has the lowest level of algorithmic solvability. You can't just plug patterns into Connections and win. You have to actually think about meanings and make creative leaps.

This is why some players prefer Connections (it feels more clever) and some avoid it (it feels unfair). Your opinion on Connections often says something about how you like to think.

Tomorrow's Strategy: How to Come Back Stronger

After you solve today's puzzle (or skip it and look at the answers), here's what to do:

Don't just move on with your day. Spend 2 minutes thinking about what made today's puzzle interesting. The homophones in purple group, the expanded definition of "things to wave" in green, the sneaky synonyms in yellow, the cultural knowledge requirement in blue.

If you got stuck, specifically identify where you got stuck. Was it the homophone wordplay? That tells you to brush up on pronunciation-based wordplay for future puzzles. Was it the cigarette brands? That tells you you're missing some cultural knowledge, which you can't really fix but now you know.

If you nailed it easily, figure out why. Did you spot a pattern immediately? Did you use process of elimination? Did you just know some cultural fact? This is how you understand your own solving process.

Then tomorrow, when game #979 appears, you'll be playing it with slightly sharper instincts. That's how you actually improve at Connections, one day at a time.

FAQ

What is NYT Connections?

NYT Connections is a daily word puzzle game created by the New York Times where players group 16 words into four categories. Each category has a different difficulty level—yellow (easy), green (medium), blue (hard), and purple (hardest). The connection between words can be direct (synonyms, category members) or creative (homophones, phrases, wordplay). Players have unlimited attempts but can only make four mistakes before failing.

How does the game scoring work in NYT Connections?

Connections doesn't have a traditional score in the way some games do. Instead, the goal is simply to complete the puzzle without making four mistakes. Your "score" is whether you solved it or not. The New York Times tracks your winning streak across consecutive days, and this streak is what most players are trying to maintain. There's no leaderboard, no points system, just the personal satisfaction of solving the puzzle.

What's the difference between the four difficulty levels?

Yellow groups are straightforward connections—usually synonyms or obvious category members like "things you can wear." Green groups require slightly deeper thinking, often using less obvious definitions of words. Blue groups might involve cultural knowledge, less common word meanings, or creative associations. Purple groups almost always involve wordplay, homophones, or highly abstract connections that require lateral thinking. The difficulty isn't just about how hard it is to spot the connection; it's about how sneaky the words are as distractors.

Why do some Connections groups feel unfair?

Connections occasionally relies on cultural knowledge that not everyone has. If you don't know cigarette brands (like today's puzzle), you're at a disadvantage. Similarly, if you don't know a specific celebrity, historical reference, or American pop culture element, you might get stuck on a group. This isn't unfair in the sense of being poorly designed—it's unavoidable in any word game that uses real-world references. The game compensates by allowing process of elimination to help you solve the last group.

What's the best strategy for solving a Connections puzzle?

Start by identifying the group you're most confident about, not necessarily the yellow group. Remove it from the board. Then look for the group with the most obvious connection. Once you have two groups locked in, the remaining six words become much easier to categorize. Always ask yourself what secondary meanings words might have. If you spot a connection that's 75% right but you can't complete it, abandon it entirely—it's probably a false path your brain is taking. Use your one advantage: once you solve three groups, the fourth is locked in through elimination.

How do I handle homophones and wordplay in purple groups?

When you encounter a purple group, first accept that the connection probably isn't literal. The words might not be directly related to each other; instead, they might sound like other words (homophones), rhyme with words, or form phrases. Try pronouncing each word aloud slowly, because homophone connections require you to think about how words sound. Look for puns or double meanings. With homophones like today's puzzle—LESSON (lessen), SYNC (shrink)—say the words out loud and listen for what they sound like, then think about what word with a similar sound could be the actual connection.

Should I play Connections competitively or just for fun?

The beauty of Connections is that it works either way. Some players are obsessed with their winning streaks and play competitively against themselves or their friends. Others play it as a fun morning mental warm-up with zero pressure. There's no "wrong" way to play. If you're playing competitively and it's causing you stress, remind yourself that it's just a game and the puzzle will reset tomorrow. If you're stuck for more than 10 minutes, take a break—your brain will often solve it subconsciously while you're doing something else.

Why can't I see the answer even when it's explained to me?

This is incredibly common, especially with purple groups. Your brain is still locked into seeing the words in their original meaning or context. Try this: read the explanation out loud. Close your eyes and visualize each word in the group separately. Think about why the puzzle designer chose these specific four words if they all meant the same thing in some way. Sometimes your brain just needs time and a different sensory input to "get it." There's no shame in this—it's actually the sign of a puzzle that's working as intended.

How do winning streaks work in Connections?

Your winning streak is purely based on solving the daily puzzle. Solve today's puzzle, your streak goes to 1. Solve tomorrow's puzzle, it goes to 2. Miss one day or fail to complete today's puzzle, your streak resets to 0. The New York Times doesn't reveal your streak to other players—it's just something you see on your own game. This is both a relief (no social pressure) and a source of personal motivation (people get weirdly attached to their streaks). Some players have been solving Connections every day since it launched and are on streaks of 500+ days.

Final Thoughts: Why This Puzzle Matters

Game #978 is a reminder of what makes Connections great: it's not about intelligence or vocabulary or cultural knowledge alone. It's about thinking creatively, questioning your assumptions, and recognizing patterns across different types of connections.

You didn't have to know cigarette brands to solve this puzzle if you solved the other three groups. You didn't have to understand homophones if you could identify the yellow, green, and blue groups. The puzzle is designed so that multiple solving paths lead to victory.

That's good game design. That's why millions of people play this every single day.

So if you solved it easily, great—you're thinking like a Connections player. If you got stuck, even better—now you know where to improve. And if you're reading this after the puzzle is over, well, at least you understand why it was tricky.

See you tomorrow at midnight when game #979 drops. And yes, it will probably be different, probably be weird, and probably make you second-guess yourself at least once.

That's the Connections experience. And honestly? That's why it's good.

Key Takeaways

• Today's NYT Connections game #978 features four distinct connection types: synonyms, symbolic items, brand names, and homophones
• The purple group uses homophone wordplay where words sound like terms meaning 'to get smaller': LESSON (lessen), RESEED (resized), SYNC (shrink), WAYNE (wane)
• Start with the group you're most confident about, not necessarily the yellow group, to build momentum and reduce cognitive load
• The blue group reveals how words have multiple meanings—PARLIAMENT is both a government building and a cigarette brand
• Effective Connections strategy involves identifying false paths your brain naturally takes, then deliberately abandoning them to reset your thinking

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