Connections: how to crack the purple group

Quick refresher. The Connections grid has 16 words split into four groups of four. The groups are:

• Yellow, easiest. Usually a literal category (“types of bread,” “movies starring Tom Hanks”).
• Green, moderate. Often a category but with an unusual angle.
• Blue, hard. Could be a tricky category OR mild wordplay.
• Purple, usually wordplay. Almost never a category of meaning.

The asymmetry matters: when you scan the 16 words, you should be looking for wordplay tells separately from category tells. Most players try to find a category for all 16 words simultaneously, which makes purple invisible.

Across hundreds of Connections puzzles, purple groups fall into four recurring wordplay archetypes.

Four words that each become a new compound or phrase when you append the same word (or prepend one). Example:

• SEA, BIRTH, COMMON, GROUND → all + STONE? No. + DAY? No. Try + WEALTH? COMMONWEALTH works. + BIRTHWEALTH? No.
• The real pattern: + DAY? BIRTHDAY ✓, COMMONDAY ✗. Try SEA+SHELL? SEASHELL ✓, COMMONSHELL ✗.
• Right answer for this example: + BED. SEABED, BIRTHBED, COMMONBED, GROUNDBED... hmm only some work.

The shape of the test: pick a word that goes after (or before) all four candidates and forms a real compound. If three of four work and one doesn’t, that fourth probably belongs to another group.

Common appended words: -BERRY, -HOUSE, -BOARD, -BALL, -HEAD, -OUT, -FALL, -DOWN, -UP, -SET. Common prepended: SUN-, OUT-, OVER-, UNDER-, BLACK-, BLUE-.

Each of the four words contains the same shorter word hidden inside. Example: STARTED, HEARTH, SMARTLY, CARTON all contain ART.

Spotting trick: scan for 3-letter or 4-letter substrings that appear in multiple words across the grid. If you see ART in two words, check whether two more grid words also contain ART.

Common hidden words: ART, EAR, ICE, AGE, ATE, INK, OWL, OAR, ARM, EAT, OAT, EAR, OAR.

This pattern is the second-most common purple type and the easiest to learn to spot. Once you start scanning for it explicitly, you’ll see it in roughly 1 in 4 puzzles.

The four words are anagrams of each other, or contain the same letters in different orders. Example: STAR, RATS, ARTS, TARS, all four use the letters A, R, S, T.

Or: each word is an anagram of a different common word when you rearrange. STOP → POTS, NAPS → SPAN, etc.

Spotting trick: pick a 4-letter word from the grid that feels like it doesn’t fit any obvious category. Count its letter frequency. Then look for other 4-letter words on the grid with identical letter frequencies.

Less common than the first two patterns but distinctive when it appears. Often signaled by a cluster of short (3-5 letter) words on the grid that don’t share an obvious category.

The four words SOUND like four things in another category. Example: KNIGHT, NUN, BISHOP, KING all sound like chess pieces (NUN ↔ none, KNIGHT ↔ night). Or: SCENT, SEAL, BARK, TRUNK all sound like animal noises or parts? (Stretching the example, actual puzzles have cleaner ones.)

More common variant: the four words each contain a homophone of a common word. EWE = YOU, KNIGHT = NIGHT, FOUR = FOR, ATE = EIGHT.

Spotting trick: read each grid word out loud and ask “does this sound like a different word?” If yes, check whether three other grid words also have hidden homophones.

Here’s the strategy that flips Connections on its head:

Don’t solve purple. Solve the other three groups first, and purple is whatever’s left.

If you can identify yellow + green + blue confidently, the four remaining words MUST be purple, and the wordplay pattern will become obvious once you see them isolated.

The catch: you have to identify those three groups without locking them in, since locking yellow when it’s actually green costs a life. The workflow:

1. Scan all 16 words. Identify three candidate yellow groups, three candidate green groups, three candidate blue groups (you’ll have overlaps, that’s fine).
2. For each candidate group, look at the OTHER 12 words. If a fifth word could plausibly be in your candidate group, that’s a trap, pick a different candidate.
3. When you have one clear candidate per color where the fifth-word substitute is implausible, the four remaining words are purple.
4. Check that the remaining four share a wordplay pattern. If they don’t, one of your candidate groups was wrong, re-examine.
5. Lock in the group you’re MOST sure of (often yellow, but not always). Re-evaluate from there.

The most expensive mistake in Connections is locking purple early because you spotted a wordplay pattern that also matches three or four of the other groups’ words.

Example trap: you spot that BEAR, FOX, CAT, BAT all contain animals (technically they ARE animals). You lock them as a group. But the real groups were:

• Stuffed animals (BEAR + 3 others), yellow
• Halloween costumes (CAT + BAT + 2 others), green
• News anchors’ surnames (FOX + 3 others), blue
• Wordplay: ___ + KEY (purple, doesn’t include any of these)

You burned a life on a 4-out-of-4 trap. Connections loves these. If your candidate purple group has an obvious literal meaning, it’s probably not purple. Purple is almost always wordplay, not a literal category.

The yellow/green/blue/purple color set isn’t friendly to many color-vision-deficient players. On Melio Connections, toggle the color-blind palette under the action row, replaces the four colors with pale- yellow, blue-grey, orange, and dark-purple. The preference persists across visits. (NYT’s version has a similar toggle if that’s where you usually play.)