Whether Connections is on your daily to-do list or you're a first-time player, Newsweek has some hints and tips to help you out with Thursday's game.
Launched by The New York Times last summer, the brainteaser has become the newspaper's second most played game after Wordle.
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If this is your first time giving it a try, Connections challenges players to uncover threads connecting a series of words. Instructions on how to play the game are below. Clues and the answers for Thursday's puzzle are toward the end of this article.
How to Play Connections
Connections tasks players with grouping 16 words into four categories based on association. For example, Thursday's game linked the words chase, hunt, quest and search under the pursuit category.
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Each of the four categories is labeled with a color, which also signifies their difficulty level. Yellow is the easiest category, followed by green, blue and purple. However, the puzzles are rarely straightforward, using homophones and wordplay, among other techniques, to keep things interesting.
The uniting themes span a wide range of topics, from movie franchises to body parts. Once you have figured out one group, those words are removed from the grid. However, players get only four guesses. Each incorrect guess adds to your mistake tally, and after four wrong answers it's game over.
Connections also has a shuffle button, which will mix up where the words appear on the screen to help players who might be stuck.
Explaining why the game has four difficulty levels, Times puzzle editor Wyna Liu said she toyed with different ways to make Connections more of a challenge.
"There would have to be a mix of categories for the game to feel challenging and satisfying," she said in the Times. "Some categories might be defined by their use of wordplay—palindromes, homophones, adding or dropping letters and words—rather than the literal meanings of the words on the cards."
However, the familiarity of the words used, and how often they pop up in contemporary life, are also difficulty factors, although less-common words aren't used only in the harder categories. "Item overlap," where one word can be linked to multiple categories, is another way Connections tests players.
"Caution was needed when including items that might stand out in the grid since they would invite immediate scrutiny," Liu said.
The answers for Thursday's puzzle will be revealed at the end of this article, so scroll with caution if you want to work them out yourself.
Connections #383 Clues for Friday
Newsweek has some hints to help you figure out Thursday's Connections categories.
Yellow: These words are associated with things you carry.
Green: Each of these answers is linked to giving a little space.
Blue: For these answers, think of ways you might give permission.
Purple: These words will make you think of clothing not usually seen by others.
Connections #383 Answers for Friday
Yellow category: Types of bags
Yellow words: Clutch, messenger, satchel, tote
Green category: Wiggle room
Green words: freedom, latitude, license, slack
Blue category: Indication to proceed
Blue words: cue, prompt, signal, word
Purple category: underwear in the singular
Purple words: boxer, brief, drawer, short
Did you guess the answers correctly? If so, congratulations. If not, there will be another opportunity to crack the puzzle on Friday.
Connections is released at midnight in your local time zone. Newsweek will be back with another round of hints and tips for each new game.
About the writer
Ryan Smith is a Newsweek Senior Pop Culture and Entertainment Reporter based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on ... Read more
