You must combine words in a creative manner in the new game from the New York Times.
My first effort at the connections game did not go well. There was a grid of 16 words, and I was instructed to select four-word groups that shared a common motif. I chose rain, heat, snow, and precipitation, only to be informed that this was incorrect. Huh?
But a moment later, that "Huh?" was supplanted by a "Aha!" Heat combined with the Jazz, Bucks, and Nets to form an NBA team. The appropriate companion for the rain-related words was hail. The race car, which at first glance appeared to be an outlier—there were no other vehicles—turned out to be a palindrome.
The New York Times' novel puzzle game is played in this manner. The four sets of words are color-coded according to their level of difficulty, and you are permitted four "mistakes" (such as my initial estimate) before you lose. I only made that one error the first time, and I solved the puzzle precisely the following day.
Where to play the Connections video game
This brand-new game is now available in the NYT Crossword app and on the paper's Games page after the New York Times removed it from "beta" mode. Every day, a new numbered conundrum is available, similar to the daily Wordle.
How to Play Connections
You are given 16 tiles in the game, each of which has a word or brief phrase on it. On each turn, you must choose four tiles that you believe constitute a group. Usually, groups consist of the same object (such as hail, rain, sleet, and snow), but there is typically at least one grouping that relies on wordplay. For instance, one conundrum grouped uncertainty, shadow, movie, and vote—all of which can be cast.
If you are incorrect, the tiles will vibrate and you will receive a message indicating how far off you are ("one away..."). If you're correct, a colored bar will appear near the top of the board, displaying the four words and exposing their theme, and your remaining tiles will rearrange themselves at the bottom of the board.
You can make four mistakes. When time runs out, the game is over, and you'll be shown the incorrect answers.
Despite the fact that there are four categories, only three need to be identified. There will be four tiles left at the conclusion that must belong to the same group. Before submitting that final group for your gimme point, attempt to determine the theme for some additional puzzle-like fun.
How to succeed at Connections
As I discovered on my first play, the point isn't to look for just any four-word grouping, but to attempt to discover the groupings that the puzzle makers had in mind. Don't be too quick to connect when you see your first potential connection. Consider the identified products; do any of them fit elsewhere?
It's also wise to assign a name to the characteristic that your four potential candidates share. The game's help screen suggests that the categories will never be as broad as "names" or "verbs," so make sure you've narrowed your search. Note that my initial estimate was simply "weather," but the correct grouping was "wet weather." After you correctly identify the grouping, the game will reveal the theme.
One Redditor suggests jotting down potential groupings on a scrap of paper, even if you wind up with more or fewer than four words in each group. Once you see them all written down, something may stand out.
I attempted this with a Connections puzzle that contained a number of words that could be cat names and some religious terms whose precise meaning was unclear. The remainder was a mystery to me. I therefore began listing potential groups:
Sylvester, Chester, Felix, Garfield, and Tom are the cats.
Religious terms include altar, reliquary, abbey, temple, and shrine.
??? : high
??? : stony
??? : silk
Grover, Calvin, Harry, and Chester are presidential first names.
As soon as I began writing that final category, which consisted of presidential first names, I realized that Chester could also be included. Taking Chester off the list of cats leaves me with only four, so I returned to the game board and predicted the presidents before the cats. Both were correct.
The only thing remaining was to determine which of the religious terms could fit with high, rocky, and silk. These three are all (literal or metaphorical) roads, so Abbey Road is their partner. You get it?
Where can I play more Connections?
If you enjoy Connections and wish to play additional games, Red Herring is a suitable substitute. The primary difference, however, is that Red Herring only contains three groupings, with the other four words thrown in to confuse you. (Get it? They're red herrings.)
A fan-created archive of Connections puzzles is also available, sorted by number and date. And if you're having so much fun with the game that you want to make your own board, select "Create" to unleash your imagination. Beware, as Wyna Liu, the editor of NYT Connections, has written, it is more difficult than it seems to come up with groupings that are complex but not too tricky.