If you’re having trouble with today’s Connections puzzle, Newsweek has all the tips and information you need to guide you to a win.
After being launched by The New York Times in June last year, Connections quickly became an online sensation.
The game employs various techniques, including homophones and wordplay, to keep players on their toes, making the puzzles rarely straightforward.
The brainteaser is now the newspaper’s second-most-played game, behind only fellow word-based puzzle Wordle.
Below are the instructions for playing the game. Clues and answers for Sunday’s puzzle are near the end of the article, so proceed carefully.
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How to Play Connections
Connections challenges players to categorize 16 words into four groups based on their associations.
Each group is color-coded to reflect its difficulty: yellow for the easiest, followed by green, blue, and purple. The puzzles are rarely straightforward, often featuring homophones, wordplay, and other techniques to keep players challenged. If players get stuck, they can use the shuffle button to rearrange the words on the screen.
Wyna Liu, a crossword editor at the Times who developed Connections, recently shared her tips for playing the game with Newsweek.
“My best piece of advice is to wait as long as you can before guessing,” she said.
“You may see the board and have completely identified the category, seeing five words that could belong in that category,” she continued. “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.
“Don’t do what I do, which is ‘rage solve,'” Liu added.
Connections #420 Clues for Sunday, July 28
Newsweek has some hints to help you figure out today’s Connections categories.
Yellow: A friendly or sometimes condescending term of address.
Green: Words you might use when you are excited to do something.
Blue: You might be seeing double.
Purple: These words can be linked to something you might see at the beach.
Connections #420 Answers for Sunday, July 28
Yellow category: Synonyms for “kiddo”
Yellow words: Buddy, champ, sport, tiger
Green category: Synonyms for the expression “up for it”
Green words: Amenable, down, game, willing
Blue category: Words beginning with double letters
Blue words: Aardvark, eerie, llama, ooze
Purple category: Nicknames for the sea, with “the”
Purple words: Blue, briny, deep, drink
Did you guess the answers correctly? If so, congratulations. If not, there will be another opportunity to crack the puzzle tomorrow.