Connections’ popularity continues to soar, a little over a year after the daily word puzzle was unveiled to the public.
The popular brainteaser was launched by The New York Times in June of last year and has gone on to become the newspaper’s second-most-played game behind Wordle, another word-based puzzle.
If you have never played it before, Connections challenges players to uncover threads connecting a series of words. Instructions on how to play the game are below. Clues and the answers for Thursday’s puzzle are toward the end of the article.
How to Play Connections
Connections tasks players with grouping 16 words into four categories based on association. For example, Wednesday’s game linked the words jam, pack, ram and stuff under the category Cram.
Each of the four categories is labeled with a color, which also signifies their difficulty level. Yellow is the easiest category, followed by green, blue and purple. However, the puzzles are rarely straightforward, using homophones and wordplay, among other techniques, to keep players challenged.
The familiarity of the words used and how often they pop up in modern life are also difficulty factors, although less-common words aren’t used only in the harder categories. “Item overlap,” where one word can be linked to multiple categories, is another way Connections tests players.
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If stuck, players can hit the shuffle button, which will mix up where the words appear on the screen.
Wyna Liu, a crossword editor at the Times who was asked to develop Connections, told Newsweek about her recommended tips for playing the game.
“My best piece of advice is to wait as long as you can before guessing,” she said.
“You may see the board and have completely identified the category, seeing five words that could belong in that category,” she continued. “Don’t try to guess the four words in that category because even though you know what the fifth member is, you won’t know which of the four it might not be,” which would ultimately waste a turn.
“Don’t do what I do, which is ‘rage solve,'” Liu said.
The answers for Thursday’s Connections puzzle will be revealed at the end of this article, so scroll with caution if you want to work them out yourself.
Connections #424 Clues for August 8
Newsweek has some hints to help you figure out Thursday’s Connections categories.
Yellow: These words can be used to describe ways one might dive into a pool.
Green: Each of these answers involves saying something more than once.
Blue: For these answers, think of something or someone depended upon.
Purple: These words precede a broadcasting medium you would listen to.
Connections #424 Answers for August 8
Yellow category: Splashy ways to enter a pool
Yellow words: Backflip, bellyflop, cannonball, jackknife
Green category: Reiterate
Green words: Echo, parrot, quote, repeat
Blue category: Mainstay
Blue words: Anchor, backbone, cornerstone, pillar
Purple category: ___ radio
Purple words: Ham, pirate, satellite, talk
Did you guess the answers correctly? If so, congratulations. If not, there will be another opportunity to crack the puzzle on Friday.
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.
