Connections Strategy: How to Spot the Groups (and Dodge the Red Herrings)

Grouping puzzles such as the New York Times' Connections give you sixteen words and ask you to sort them into four sets of four. It sounds like a vocabulary test, yet patience matters more than vocabulary. Nearly every board is built so that more than four words seem to fit at least one category, and the players who solve consistently are the ones who notice that overlap before they press Submit.

This guide explains how these puzzles are put together, then walks through a method you can use every day. The example words are our own; we never reproduce real puzzles.

How the puzzles are built

Each board has four groups, usually ranked by difficulty from the most straightforward to the most devious. In Connections the colours run yellow, green, blue and purple, with purple typically reserved for wordplay. You may make four mistakes before the game ends.

Setters build tension in two ways. They choose categories whose members overlap, so that one word could belong to two groups. And they plant red herrings: words that look like they belong to a tempting category that is not actually on the board. If you see five fish, at least one of them is doing another job.

The four kinds of category

Most groups fall into one of these families, and once you know which family you are looking at, the group gets much easier to pin down.

1. Plain meaning

Words that share a definition or a topic: types of cheese, things in a toolbox, synonyms for "nonsense". These are usually the easiest group, but they are also where decoys hide. A board might offer six words that mean "talk": CHAT, BABBLE, NATTER, GAB, YAK and RAMBLE. Only four of them belong together; the other two are bait for another category.

2. Fill in the blank

All four words can precede or follow the same word. FIRE ___ might give you FIREWORK, FIREPLACE, FIREFLY and FIREMAN. ___ BALL could give FOOTBALL, SNOWBALL, MEATBALL and EYEBALL. When you see an odd mix of words with no shared meaning, try adding a common word in front or behind them.

3. Wordplay

These categories care about letters and sounds rather than meaning:

• Homophones: words that sound like letters or numbers (SEA, EYE, TEA, WHY).
• Anagrams: words that rearrange into a theme (EARTH, HEART, HATER, RATHE).
• Added or removed letters: words that become new words when you drop the first letter (SCOLD → COLD, BRAIN → RAIN).
• Hidden words: each word conceals a smaller one, such as an animal tucked inside. sCATter hides CAT, BEARd hides BEAR and cRAMp hides RAM.

Wordplay groups are usually the hardest, which is why they tend to be left for last.

4. Trivia and pop culture

Members of a band, characters in a novel, words that are also car models. You either know these or you do not, and that is fine: solve everything else first, and the last four words will form the group by elimination.

A method for every board

Step 1: Read all sixteen words before touching anything

Resist the urge to click the first four that fit. Read every word once and say each one out loud in your head. Note which words could have more than one meaning: BASS (fish or instrument), SPRING (season, coil or water source), PITCH (field, throw or tone). Double-meaning words are almost always the hinge between two groups.

Step 2: List every possible category

For each word, jot down the categories it might belong to. You will usually find one or two candidate groups with more than four members. That is your warning sign.

Step 3: Find the group with exactly four

The safest first submission is a category with exactly four plausible members and no overlap. If "types of knot" can only be BOWLINE, HITCH, SHEEPSHANK and REEF, submit it. Every correct group removes four words and makes the rest easier.

Step 4: Resolve the overlaps

When a category has five or six candidates, ask which of them is needed elsewhere. If BASS fits "fish" but also fits "instruments", and you only have three instruments without it, BASS is an instrument today. Working out where the extra words must go is usually more reliable than guessing which four belong together.

Step 5: Leave the strangest words for last

If two or three words seem to fit nowhere, that is a clue: they are probably part of the wordplay group. Once the other groups are solved, the last four will reveal their connection, and sometimes the answer will make you groan out loud.

Using your mistakes wisely

You can usually afford two or three wrong guesses on a hard board, so spend them strategically.

• "One away" means three are right. Swap out the word you are least sure of for the best alternative. Changing two words at once wastes the information.
• Do not repeat a combination. Keep track of what you tried. It is easy to submit the same four twice when you are rushing.
• Guess the group, not the word. If you are torn between two categories, submit the one you can fully defend rather than a mixed set.

Train your pattern recognition

Grouping puzzles get easier with exposure to the tricks:

• Collect compound words. When you meet a word, think of what commonly goes before and after it.
• Practise anagrams. A quick anagram habit makes wordplay groups jump out. Our anagram solver is handy for checking, and Anagram Sprint is good practice.
• Notice homophones. Say words aloud; your ear spots sound-alikes faster than your eye.
• Read widely. Pop-culture categories reward general knowledge, and there is no shortcut for that.

When you want a nudge

If you are stuck on the day's puzzle and want help without spoilers, our Connections hints page starts with a gentle clue for each group and only reveals the words if you ask. The full solution is on the Connections answers page. Both are independent from the puzzle's publisher.

The most important skill is the simplest one: slow down. Most failed boards are lost on the first submission, when a tempting group turns out to have one decoy in it. Read everything, count the candidates, and let the overlaps tell you where each word really belongs.