Connections Hint (Forbes)

A solving order that avoids most mistakes

Connections gives you four wrong guesses before the board locks, and most of them get spent on the same mistake: committing to a group before checking whether one of its words fits somewhere else better. The fix is order, not speed. Find the group you are most sure of first, whichever color it happens to be, and lock those four words in before you touch anything else.

Leave the group that looks hardest for last. It is usually easier to name by elimination, once the other twelve words are spoken for, than it is to spot directly, and that is where the puzzle hides its wordplay categories on purpose. If two words seem to fit more than one group, that overlap is deliberate. Treat it as a sign you have the wrong group for one of them, not a sign your theory is close enough.

Common red-herring patterns

A handful of trap shapes come up often enough to watch for by name. Homophones: four words that sound like something else entirely once said aloud, which nothing about the spelling gives away. Fill-in-the-blank groups, four words that all precede or follow the same missing word, printed as the category name with a line where the word should be. And single-theme groups built around one famous person, place, or thing, where the words look unrelated until you know what they all describe.

None of these are visible from the sixteen words alone, which is the point: the puzzle wants you to try the obvious grouping first and get it wrong once. If a group you were confident about turns out to be a mistake, ask whether one of its words might actually belong to a pattern like these rather than to the meaning you first read into it.

Today's board, easiest color to hardest

Four nudges, ordered yellow to purple by design. Work down the list and stop as soon as one clicks.

Common questions

Is this page affiliated with Forbes?

No. Wordton and Forbes are unrelated. This page is our own writing about the same day's Connections puzzle, published because we cover the puzzle every day, not because of any relationship with Forbes or its writers.

What's the best order to solve the four groups?

Start with whichever group you're most confident about, lock those four words in, and reassess before touching the rest. Save the hardest-looking group for last: it's usually easier to identify by elimination than by spotting its theme directly.

Is NYT Connections free to play?

Yes. The daily puzzle is free on the New York Times Games site and app, with no subscription needed. A Times subscription unlocks the archive and a couple of extra features, but today's board is open to anyone.

How often do these hints update?

Once a day, at 6:00 AM ET, at this same permanent address. There's nothing to refresh mid-day; the hints you see are the day's final version until the next morning.