Connections is one of the nine digital games of the American newspaper The New York Times. It’s a word puzzle, which was launched in 2023 after the success of Wordle.

If experts are to be believed, none of the media houses have been successful like the NYT in bringing that experience of playing newspaper games to the digital world.

The Crossword was the first game The Times launched in 1942. After more than seven decades and the boom of the internet, it introduced The Mini Crossword. Then Spelling Bee, Letter Boxed, Tiles and Vertex.

The NYT’s attempt to expand its gaming ambitions kicked off with the acquisition of the word game Wordle. Other games were also launched under such plans, but it was not an easy ride as the paper shut down the math game Digits last year.

How to play

Connections can be played on both web and mobile devices. It requires players to group four words that share something in common.

They have to select four items from a set of words placed in 16 boxes. Each grouping of words is split into four categories. These sets could comprise anything from book titles, software, movies country names, etc.

You have to click submit after identifying the group of words. If a player gets all four words in a set correct, those words are removed from the board.

Each group is assigned a colour, with yellow being the easiest, followed by green, blue, and purple. Like Wordle, players can share the results with their friends on social media.

Consider the four grey circles as lifelines that would end after every single mistake.

“Categories will always be more specific than ‘5-LETTER-WORDS,’ ‘NAMES’ or ‘VERBS’. Each puzzle has exactly one solution. Watch out for words that seem to belong to multiple categories!” according to the website.

It’s better to start from the easy levels first as the options remaining in the end would be the difficult ones, making you understand the nature of the game.

As the level gets harder, make sure to look beyond surface level similarities and get creative. It would be better to dig deeper as the connections between words are not as obvious as you think.

But the good old process of elimination is a good strategy to play the game. Narrow down your choices by eliminating words that don’t fit the potential relationship and go from there.

Nothing to worry about if you fail as there is always another day.

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Why Connections?

Connections has been in development for a year, with the games team concocting the idea at a “Game Jam” (think: a hackathon, but for games), Jonathan Knight, head of Games at the Times, told CNN last year.

Initially, it was launched in beta in June with the puzzle only being findable via search or in the menu of other games

According to Knight, it was an instant hit. “Connections is very approachable, and it’s very easy to understand,” he said and described it as Times’ “most editorially driven games”.

“It’s that human-made component with the puzzle-constructor going up against them every day and trying to outwit them as they try to outwit you,” Knight said. “I think that is kind of magic.”

Feb 28 answers

Connections answers for February 28 are…

• Yellow group — propel into the air (HOP, JUMP, LEAP, SPRING)

• Green group — place to store valuables (CHEST, COFFER, SAFE, VAULT)

• Blue group — period (AGE, DAY, ERA, TIME)

• Purple group — animals backward (DRIB, FLOW, REED, TANG)