Connections is one of those games that can either be a breeze to solve, or you need a helping hand.
That’s where Newsweek comes in, with a list of handy clues to guide you along with solving the daily word puzzle. If all else fails, the answers are below.
How to Play Connections
Players are tasked with grouping 16 words into four categories based on association. For example, one game linked the words “clear,” “earn,” “make” and “net,” which all came under the category “take home, as income.”
Each of the four categories is labeled with a color, which also signifies their difficulty level: beginning with yellow as the easiest, then green, blue and finally the toughest category, purple.
Don’t be fooled though, the puzzles are rarely straightforward, using homophones and wordplay, among other techniques, to keep things interesting.
The uniting themes can come from a broad range of categories—anything from Halloween costumes to music genres.
If all four words are correctly placed into each set, those words will be removed from the board. Each incorrect guess counts toward the mistake tally. Up to four errors can be made before it is game over.
To make things a bit tougher, a word can sometimes belong to more than one category—but there is only one correct answer.
Players can shuffle and rearrange the board if they want to try to make the process of guessing the connections easier.
Wyna Liu is the daily editor of Connections, which is published by The New York Times, and she shared with Newsweek in June some tips on how to solve the game.
“My best piece of advice is to wait as long as you can before guessing,” she began. “You may see the board and have completely identified the category, seeing five words that could belong in that category.
“Don’t try to guess the four words in that category, because even though you know what the fifth member is, you won’t know which of the four it might not be,” which would ultimately waste a turn.
By trying your hand at finding another category first, it is likely to remove the words that could belong to more than one group, ultimately meaning there’s less chance to commit an error, because “your four guesses go by extremely quickly.”
“Don’t do what I do which is ‘rage solve’,” she said.
The answers for Tuesday’s puzzle are toward the end of the article, so scroll with caution if you want to work them out yourself.
Connections #450 Clues for Tuesday, September 3
Newsweek has some hints to help you figure out today’s Connections categories.
Yellow: To let someone or something off.
Green: Ridiculously or unnecessarily.
Blue: Money from around the world.
Purple: A word that can come before the word that means cranium or noggin.
New York Times
Connections #450 Answers for Tuesday, September 3
Yellow Category: ABSOLVE
Yellow Words: Excuse, Pardon, Save, Spare
Green Category: EXCESSIVELY
Green Words: Beyond, Extra, Too, Over
Blue Category: GLOBAL CURRENCIES
Blue Words: Won, Real, Pound, Yen
Purple Category: ____ HEAD
Purple Words: Arrow, Block, Fore, Knuckle
Connections reset daily at midnight in your local time zone, and Newsweek will be back with more hints, tips and answers to help you solve the daily puzzle on Wednesday.