Connections is an online game featured by The New York Times that has quickly become very popular, with the top 10 cities or boroughs with the most completed puzzles being New York, Chicago, Sydney, Melbourne, Brooklyn, Seattle, Los Angeles, Toronto, Philadelphia and Minneapolis. The game is edited by Wyna Liu, who shared her tips for playing with Newsweek, advising players to wait as long as possible before guessing in order to avoid wasting a turn. The game requires players to group 16 words into four categories based on association, with each category labeled with a color indicating its difficulty level.
Instructions for playing the game are provided, with clues and answers for a recent puzzle presented for players to try to solve. Each word in a set must be correctly placed in order to advance, with the option to shuffle and rearrange the board to assist in making connections. The game incorporates various techniques like homophones and wordplay to keep players engaged and challenged. Categories can range from Quentin Tarantino films to geometric terms, adding to the diversity of knowledge required to successfully complete the puzzles.
In a specific puzzle example described, the categories included words related to giving up information, ways to tear relationships apart, words that are seen but not heard, and words indicating success in life. The answers for each category were provided for players to check their guesses against. Newsweek offers hints to assist players in deciphering the categories, and congratulates those who successfully solve the puzzle while also encouraging those who did not to try again the next day. The game is part of Newsweek’s commitment to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the pursuit of common ground.
