Connections·5 min read·May 24, 2026

How to play Connections: rules, strategy, and the colors

Connections is the New York Times word-grouping puzzle that exploded in 2023. The rules take 30 seconds. The strategy takes a week. Here’s everything you need for both, applied to the Melio version (which uses our own grids, not the NYT’s).

The rules in 30 seconds

Sixteen words on a grid. They split cleanly into four hidden groups of four, each group tied to a single theme. Your job is to find the groups.

You get four mistakes. After the fourth, the puzzle ends and the unsolved groups are revealed.

Select four words you think share a theme, hit Submit. If you’re right, the group locks in and reveals its category. If you’re wrong, the four words shake and you lose one mistake.

One special case: if you guess three of four correctly, the game will tell you “one away.”That’s a useful hint: three of the four selected words really do belong together, but one is in a different group.

What the four colors mean

Once you solve a group, it locks in with one of four colors:

Yellow:easiest. Usually a literal, obvious shared category. (“Citrus fruits” · “Days of the week”)
Green:a step trickier. Still literal but slightly less common. (“Mountain ranges” · “Card game terms”)
Blue:trickier still; often requires noticing a less-obvious connection. (“Words after ___ apple” · “Types of bread”)
Purple: the wildcard. Almost always a wordplay group: homophones, words that sound like numbers, words hidden inside other words, fill-in- the-blanks. Save it for last.

The three habits that turn 0/4 into 4/4

The trap is that two or three categories will have overlapping words. A grid with “Citrus fruits” and “Apple ___” might both want APPLE, and ORANGE might belong to citrus, or to colors, or to a wordplay group on “works ___”. The puzzle is testing whether you can separate the overlap.

Three habits help:

Don’t submit your first guess. If you spot a yellow group instantly, double-check that every one of the four belongs onlyto that group. Find an alternative home for each word first. Only submit when you’ve eliminated other candidates.
Solve purple second. Purple is the wildcard group: once you spot it, the wordplay locks its four words out of all other groups, which makes the remaining 12 much easier. Counterintuitive but effective.
When stuck, scan for stems.If three words feel like they should go together but you’re not sure of the fourth, look at the other 12 for anything that fits the pattern. Words that seem “leftover” or don’t fit your other proposed groups are often hiding in plain sight.

Common mistakes to avoid

Submitting too eagerly. The grid is designed so multiple proto-groups look correct. First instinct = often wrong.
Ignoring the “one away” signal. If the game tells you three were right and one was wrong, treat that as gold. Take the three that fit most obviously, swap the fourth for something else.
Burning mistakes on the easy yellow. If yellow looks “too easy,” the puzzle is probably hiding a trick. Take a beat before submitting.
Trying to brute-force purple.Purple usually involves wordplay: homophones, hidden words, fill-in-the-blanks. If you’re trying to find a literal category, you’re probably looking at the wrong kind of group.

A worked example

Let’s say you see this board:

LEMON PIE LIME JAZZ NET BAY LAKE SAUCE ACE LOVE ORANGE POND CORE SEA SERVE GRAPEFRUIT

Yellow probably jumps out: LEMON, LIME, ORANGE, GRAPEFRUIT: citrus fruits. Looks obvious. But wait, could ORANGE be a color group? Are there other colors? Looking at the rest: no obvious colors. Good, submit citrus.

Now scan for purple. Notice NET, ACE, LOVE, SERVE: tennis terms. Or are they? LOVE is also a feeling, NET is also math/profit. Test the tennis hypothesis: ace, net, love, serve are all explicitly tennis. Submit.

That leaves BAY, LAKE, POND, SEA (bodies of water) and PIE, CORE, SAUCE, JAZZ, which doesn’t look like anything until you notice they’re all words that come after “Apple” (apple pie, apple core, apple sauce, Apple Jazz... wait, that doesn’t work). Actually JAZZ: there’s no “apple jazz.” But JAZZ is the Utah Jazz, which makes JAZZ a basketball team... but the rest of the words aren’t teams. The puzzle is leaning on you to spot “Apple ___” with JAZZ as the misdirect.

The puzzle generator might be playing fair (JAZZ does fit some “Apple Jazz” meaning) or unfair (one of the four is in the wrong group and you need to swap). The point: even on a clean-looking grid, your last two groups will resist. Take the time.

Where Melio's Connections differs from NYT's

Melio Connections uses an independently-authored grid rotation. The format is identical (16 words, 4 themes, 4 mistakes), but the puzzles aren’t the same as the NYT’s on any given day. That’s on purpose: we wanted a daily Connections without depending on or copying the NYT.

The browse-by-date archive lives at /connections/past-puzzles if you want to study past grids; each date has its own page with a progressive hint ladder so you can practice without spoilers.

Keep reading

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Connections grid archetypes: the six patterns to recognize

Every Connections puzzle reuses a handful of grid shapes. Spotting which one you're looking at narrows the category-guessing space from huge to small. Six archetypes, examples, and how to attack each.

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Connections: how to crack the purple group

Purple is wordplay 95% of the time. Here's the four wordplay patterns Connections uses, how to spot them, and the elimination trick that turns purple into the easiest group.

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Speed comes from scanning order and pattern recognition, not from rushing. Scan by digit, pencil-mark only when you stall, learn the handful of techniques you actually hit, never guess, and race the clock until it is automatic.

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Chess openings for beginners: principles over memorization

You do not need to memorize twenty moves of theory. Control the center, develop your pieces, castle early, and connect your rooks. The handful of opening principles that beat most casual opponents, plus four sound, easy openings to start with.

Browse all guides →

The rules in 30 seconds

Sixteen words on a grid. They split cleanly into four hidden groups of four, each group tied to a single theme. Your job is to find the groups.

You get four mistakes. After the fourth, the puzzle ends and the unsolved groups are revealed.

Select four words you think share a theme, hit Submit. If you’re right, the group locks in and reveals its category. If you’re wrong, the four words shake and you lose one mistake.

What the four colors mean

Once you solve a group, it locks in with one of four colors:

Yellow:easiest. Usually a literal, obvious shared category. (“Citrus fruits” · “Days of the week”)
Green:a step trickier. Still literal but slightly less common. (“Mountain ranges” · “Card game terms”)
Blue:trickier still; often requires noticing a less-obvious connection. (“Words after ___ apple” · “Types of bread”)
Purple: the wildcard. Almost always a wordplay group: homophones, words that sound like numbers, words hidden inside other words, fill-in- the-blanks. Save it for last.

The three habits that turn 0/4 into 4/4

Three habits help:

Don’t submit your first guess. If you spot a yellow group instantly, double-check that every one of the four belongs onlyto that group. Find an alternative home for each word first. Only submit when you’ve eliminated other candidates.
Solve purple second. Purple is the wildcard group: once you spot it, the wordplay locks its four words out of all other groups, which makes the remaining 12 much easier. Counterintuitive but effective.
When stuck, scan for stems.If three words feel like they should go together but you’re not sure of the fourth, look at the other 12 for anything that fits the pattern. Words that seem “leftover” or don’t fit your other proposed groups are often hiding in plain sight.

Common mistakes to avoid

Submitting too eagerly. The grid is designed so multiple proto-groups look correct. First instinct = often wrong.
Ignoring the “one away” signal. If the game tells you three were right and one was wrong, treat that as gold. Take the three that fit most obviously, swap the fourth for something else.
Burning mistakes on the easy yellow. If yellow looks “too easy,” the puzzle is probably hiding a trick. Take a beat before submitting.
Trying to brute-force purple.Purple usually involves wordplay: homophones, hidden words, fill-in-the-blanks. If you’re trying to find a literal category, you’re probably looking at the wrong kind of group.

A worked example

Let’s say you see this board:

LEMON PIE LIME JAZZ NET BAY LAKE SAUCE ACE LOVE ORANGE POND CORE SEA SERVE GRAPEFRUIT

Where Melio's Connections differs from NYT's

The browse-by-date archive lives at /connections/past-puzzles if you want to study past grids; each date has its own page with a progressive hint ladder so you can practice without spoilers.