A few months ago, a friend sent me a screenshot of a colorful grid with the message "you'll love this." She was right. The Connections Game has since become a small daily ritual for me, something I do with my morning coffee before the day gets busy. If you enjoy word puzzles but want something a little different from crosswords or Wordle, this one might be worth a look.

What the Game Is About

The setup is simple. You're shown 16 words arranged in a 4x4 grid. Your job is to sort them into four groups of four, where each group shares a hidden connection. That connection could be almost anything: types of pasta, words that come before "ball," famous Johns, or things you find in a kitchen drawer.

The catch is that many words seem to fit more than one category. A word like "bass" might look like a fish, but it could also belong to a group of musical terms or things that are "low." The game deliberately plants these overlaps to trip you up.

Each puzzle has four difficulty levels, usually marked by color. Yellow is the most straightforward, green and blue sit in the middle, and purple is the trickiest, often involving wordplay or lateral thinking. You get four mistakes before the round ends, so there's a bit of tension in every guess.

How a Round Actually Plays Out

You select four words you believe belong together and submit them. If you're right, they lock in as a group and clear off the board. If you're wrong, you lose one of your mistakes. Get three of the four correct and the game usually tells you you're "one away," which is both helpful and a little maddening.

Once all four groups are solved, you see the full breakdown of the categories. This is often my favorite part, especially when a purple category reveals something clever I never would have spotted.

A Few Tips That Helped Me

Start by scanning the whole grid without clicking anything. Look for words that only fit one obvious theme and set those aside mentally. The words that seem to fit multiple groups are the red herrings, so hold off on them.

Try to spot the purple group early. It's counterintuitive, but if you can identify the weird category first, the rest tends to fall into place. Look for words that share an unusual pattern: same number of letters, hidden words inside them, or things that pair with a common prefix.

If you're one away, don't just swap a random word. Think about which word in your group is the "flexible" one and what else it might belong to.

And finally, don't be afraid to leave it and come back. Stepping away for ten minutes has saved me more than once.

Final Thoughts

What I like most about the Connections Game is how it rewards curiosity rather than vocabulary size. You don't need to know obscure words, just to notice relationships between ordinary ones. It's quick, it's a little humbling, and it's fun to compare notes with friends afterward. Give it a try tomorrow morning and see what you think.