If you’ve never played Connections before—or you’re struggling with today’s puzzle—Newsweek has some instructions to get you started and a host of hints to help you reach the finish line.
Launched by The New York Times in June 2023, the brainteaser is now the news outlet’s second-most-played game after Wordle. While similarly word-based, 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 today’s puzzle are toward the end of the article.
How to Play ‘Connections’
In Connections, players must group together words that they think have common threads to reveal the name of their corresponding categories.
Each puzzle consists of 16 words, with each group of words separated into four groups. The uniting themes can come from a broad range of categories, including anything from horror-movie franchises to types of sound to food.
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 the game ends.
Players can shuffle and rearrange the board if they want to try to make the process of guessing the connections easier.
The board also has a color-coding system representing levels of difficulty. Yellow represents the easiest, followed by green, blue and purple. A group’s color will be revealed only once the words in a group have been correctly connected.
It is worth pointing out that a word can sometimes belong to more than one category—but there is only one correct answer.
Connections editor Wyna Liu, who is credited with bringing the game to life, has advised that if you notice that there are five or more words that belong to one category, try pivoting to a different category before making your first guess.
“Doing so might take one of those extra cards out of contention, or at least remove a few cards from the board, making other categories easier to see,” Liu said.
The answers for today’s Connections puzzle will be revealed at the end of this article, so please scroll with caution if you want to work them out yourself.
‘Connections’ #345 Clues for Tuesday, May 21
Newsweek has some hints to help you figure out today’s Connections categories.
Yellow: These words represent a small amount of something.
Green: For these words, think of getting more bang for your buck.
Blue: These words are associated with a game originally from England.
Purple: Each of these answers precedes a word for something you would read.
‘Connections’ #345 Answers for Tuesday, May 21
Yellow Category: SMIDGEN
Yellow Words: Bit, Dash, Pinch, Touch
Green Category: BARGAIN
Green Words: Buy, Deal, Steal, Value
Blue Category: BILLIARDS EQUIPMENT
Blue Words: Ball, Chalk, Cue, Rack
Purple Category: __BOOK (THAT’S NOT A BOOK)
Purple Words: Face, Mac, Match, Pocket
Did you guess the answers correctly? If so, congratulations. If not, there will be another opportunity to crack the puzzle tomorrow.
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.
Read the full article here
