Exploring The Exciting World Of Connections: A New Challenge From The NYT

Connections is the daily word challenge giving its New York Times stablemate, Wordle, a run for its money. Launched in 2023, Connections challenges players to find common threads between a series of words. Players must group them and name the categories. Much like Wordle, which was created by Josh Wardle, Connections became popular very quickly and is now the second most-played word game published by NYT.

Each puzzle has 16 words, which players must separate into four groups of four words, whose uniting themes come from a broad range of categories. If all four words are correctly placed into each set, those words will be removed from the board. But incorrect guesses count towards the mistake tally, and the game ends once you reach four mistakes.

Players can shuffle and rearrange the board of words to help them with guessing the connections. The board has a color-coding system representing levels of difficulty. Yellow represents the easiest, followed by green, blue, and purple. A group's color will only be revealed once they have been correctly connected. What makes the game a bit tougher though is the fact that sometimes a word can belong to more than one category—but there is only one correct answer.

Connections editor Wyna Liu has suggested that if you realize that there are five or more words that belong to one category, try pivoting to a different category before making your first guess. "Doing so might take one of those extra cards out of contention, or at least remove a few cards from the board, making other categories easier to see," Liu said.

'Connections' #310 Clues for Tuesday, April 16

Newsweek has shared hints to help you figure out today's Connections categories.

• Yellow: This category refers to a reaction.
• Green: For these words, think of what Newsweek does.
• Blue: These words are associated with a kind of spacial equality.
• Purple: These words are associated with the space where one might "tread the boards."

'Connections' #310 Answers for Tuesday, April 16

Yellow Category: FLABBERGAST

Yellow Words: Floor, Shock, Rock, Surprise

Green Category: BIT OF JOURNALISM

Green Words: Article, Feature, Report, Story

Blue Category: ON THE SAME PLANE

Blue Words: Even, Flat, Flush, Level

Purple Category: THEATER SECTIONS

Purple Words: Balcony, Box, Orchestra, Stage

Did you guess the answers correctly? If so, congratulations. If not, there will be another opportunity to crack the puzzle tomorrow. Connections is released at midnight in your local time zone. Newsweek will be back with another round of hints and tips for each new game.