NYT Connections Hint - Daily Puzzle Help & Answers

The new NYT Connections puzzle is released every day at 12:00 AM ET (midnight Eastern Time). This means the puzzle refreshes at the same time as other NYT Games like Wordle and the Mini Crossword. We update our hints page within minutes of the new puzzle going live, so you can get help whenever you need it!

Yes! NYT Connections is completely free to play. Unlike the NYT Crossword which requires a subscription, Connections is available to everyone without any paywall. You can access it directly on the New York Times Games website or through their mobile app without signing in or paying for a subscription.

Practice is key! Play daily to recognize common patterns. Start by reading our beginner's guide to understand basic category types. Study past puzzles to see how connections work. Don't rush - take time to consider multiple meanings of words. Use our progressive hints when stuck rather than looking at full answers immediately. Join online communities to discuss strategies. Most importantly, learn from mistakes - when you get a wrong guess, analyze why to avoid similar errors.

While difficulty is subjective, puzzles with heavy wordplay in multiple categories tend to be rated hardest by players. Particularly challenging puzzles include those with obscure fill-in-the-blank categories, homophones, or where multiple words could legitimately belong to different groups. Check our archive for community difficulty ratings and see which puzzles stumped the most solvers!

The four colors indicate difficulty levels: Yellow is the easiest with the most obvious connections. Green is medium difficulty with moderately clear relationships. Blue is hard with less apparent connections or wordplay. Purple is the trickiest with abstract, creative, or surprising connections that often involve clever wordplay or unexpected relationships. The colors are only revealed after you successfully identify each category.

Unfortunately, the official NYT Games website only offers today's puzzle. However, you can use our archive section to review past puzzles, see the answers, and read detailed explanations of how the categories worked. This is perfect for practice and learning new patterns!

Perfect games (solving with zero mistakes) are relatively rare! While exact statistics aren't publicly available, community data suggests only 10-20% of players complete puzzles without any wrong guesses. Easier puzzles might see 30% perfect solve rates, while difficult puzzles might see less than 5%. Don't be discouraged if you need hints - Connections is designed to be challenging!

The "one away" message means you have three correct words and one incorrect word in your selection. This is both helpful (you're close!) and frustrating (which one is wrong?). It often happens with red herring words designed to fit multiple categories. When you see this message, carefully reconsider each word - think about alternate meanings and whether one word might better fit elsewhere. Don't keep submitting with just one word swapped; take time to reassess the entire group.

This is completely personal preference! Some players prefer the satisfaction of solving completely unaided, even if they fail. Others use progressive hints to learn without full spoilers. Our three-level hint system is designed to give gentle nudges without ruining the puzzle. We recommend: try solving on your own first, use Level 1 hints if stuck, only progress to stronger hints if needed, and always try to solve the purple category yourself even with hints for others. The goal is enjoying the puzzle at your skill level!

NYT Connections puzzles are created by Wyna Liu, an associate puzzle editor at The New York Times. Each puzzle is carefully crafted to include four distinct categories with varying difficulty levels. The process involves selecting words that create interesting connections while including red herrings to challenge players. Words are chosen to have potential alternate meanings or relationships, making the purple category especially tricky. The best puzzles have that "aha!" moment when the connection finally clicks.