The basic rules
You get a 4x4 grid of 16 words. Your job is to find the four groups of four words that share a hidden connection. You select four words and submit; if they're a correct group, they lock in. You have four mistakes before the puzzle ends.
Each group is color-coded by difficulty after you solve it: yellow is easiest, green is straightforward, blue is tricky, and purple is the hardest — usually wordplay, hidden words, or a category that deliberately overlaps with the others.
Start with the group you're most sure of
Resist the urge to submit your first idea. Instead, scan all 16 words and look for the four you're most confident belong together. Confidence — not speed — is what protects your guess budget.
If you can find five or six words that all seem to fit one theme, that's a warning sign: the puzzle is using overlap. Hold that group and solve an easier one first to remove the decoys.
Watch for the overlap trap
The hardest part of Connections is that words are chosen to fit more than one group. A word like 'BASS' could be a fish, a voice, or an instrument. The puzzle wants you to commit to the obvious reading.
When you're stuck, ask which words have a second meaning. The purple group is almost always built from that second meaning — homophones, words that precede or follow a common word, or hidden smaller words.
Solve by elimination
Once you lock in two groups, the remaining eight words become far easier. Often the last two groups solve themselves because the decoys are gone.
If you have three groups and the last four are obvious, double-check them anyway — a single misread word here costs you the perfect game.