Connections is a game from the New York Times that challenges you to find the association between words. It sounds easy, but it isn’t—Connections categories can be almost anything, and they’re usually quite specific. If you need a hand getting the answers, we’ve got you covered.
What Is Connections?
Connections is a puzzle game from the New York Times. The objective is simple: sort 16 words into groups of 4. Each group of words will be connected by some common idea or theme. That common element could be anything from the number of letters in the words to a common use for all the words. Once you’re confident, select 4 words, then hit “Submit.” You have only four attempts in total, so don’t be too guess-happy.
Hints for Today’s Connections Categories
Here are a few small hints to get you started on the 295th Connections game.
- Yellow: Mistakes
- Green: A Minor Disagreement
- Blue: Probability
- Purple: Sometimes edible, sometimes not, sometimes abstract
What Are Today’s Connections Categories?
If you’re still struggling, the actual categories are:
- Yellow: Update for Accuracy
- Green: Quarrel
- Blue: Games of Chance
- Purple: ___ Chip
Today’s Connections Answers
Yellow: Update for Accuracy
Amend, Correct, Fix, Revise
Green: Quarrel
Fight, Row, Scrap, Tiff
Blue: Games of Chance
Bingo, Lottery, Roulette, War
Purple: ___ Chip
Blue, Computer, Poker, Potato
How Did We Solve This Puzzle?
We felt that the puzzle for March 27th was slightly harder than yesterday’s puzzle. Four words immediately jumped out as almost synonyms—fix, revise, amend, and correct—so we immediately tried lumping them together. Looking for synonyms is consistently a good way to get answers in Connections, and today was no exception. They all fit into the category “Update For Accuracy.”
Next, we noticed that several words are related to gambling. Poker, roulette, and lottery are all gambling games. Bingo is also a gambling game, but it can also be an expression that means someone has gotten something correct. However, no other words on the board seem to match that idea, so we tried going with “gambling” as a category, and included poker, roulette, bingo, and lottery.
That turned out to be wrong, and required a reevaluation. Thinking about it more carefully, bingo, lottery, and roulette all have one thing in common: they’re gambling based purely on chance. Poker, on the other hand, has some strategy involved, so we discarded that one as the outlier. There are a number of words on today’s puzzle that are related to conflict of some kind: fight, tiff, row, scrap, and war.
Of those, war is also a card game based purely on chance (unless you’re stacking the deck!), and the other words tend to imply small-scale conflicts, rather than something involving entire nations. Throwing together roulette, bingo, lottery, and war was correct, and the category was “Games of Chance.”
The remaining options are now less muddy than they were originally. It is more obvious that tiff, fight, scrap, and row fit together, as all of those words are related to conflict. The category the New York Times chose was quarrel.
That leaves just blue, computer, potato, and poker. The category was ___ chip. Of those, computer chip, potato chip, and poker chip are all quite common. However, blue chip is a bit more obscure.
A blue chip, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is “a stock issue of high investment quality that usually pertains to a substantial well-established company and enjoys public confidence in its worth and stability.” Like Enron, or Lehman Brothers.
How Do You Guess Connections Categories?
There is no quick, reliable way to approach Connections like there is with Wordle, since Connections isn’t algorithmic. However, there are a few things to keep in mind that can help.
- Look for similar parts of speech. Are some words verbs and others nouns? Are some adjectives? Try mentally grouping them based on those categories and see if any other patterns jump out at you.
- Are the words synonyms? Sometimes categories will just be synonyms for a phrase, or very close to synonyms. Don’t rely too closely on this, though. Sometimes Connections will deliberately throw in words that are sometimes synonyms to mislead you.
- Try saying the words. Sometimes, saying the words helps. One puzzle we saw included the words go, rate, faster, clip, pace, speed, move, commute, and hurry—all of which are obviously related to the idea of motion. However, when you say them, it becomes a little more obvious that only four (go, move, hurry, faster) are things you’d actually say to prompt someone to get moving.
- Expect the red herring. Connections usually has words that could be plausibly, yet incorrectly, grouped together. Take the words Bud, Corona, and Light, as an example. You might instinctively see those three words together and assume they’re lumped together in a category related to beer—but they weren’t.
- Look for distinct words. If a word on your board doesn’t have multiple meanings or can really only be used in one context, try using that word as the basis for a category.
If you didn’t solve this one, don’t feel too bad—there’s always tomorrow! And those words may align with a topic you’re interested in, giving you a leg up on the competition.
