It is 9:02 AM. You are staring at a grid of sixteen words, feeling like a genius because you spotted "Apple," "Banana," "Cherry," and "Date" immediately. You click them. One away. Your heart sinks. It turns out "Date" wasn't a fruit; it was a romantic outing, or maybe a specific point in time, or perhaps a person you dread seeing at a wedding. This is the daily emotional rollercoaster of the groups of four NYT puzzle, officially known as Connections.
Wyna Liu, the associate puzzle editor at The New York Times, has created a monster. Since its beta launch in June 2023, the game has surged to become the second most popular puzzle in the Times' stable, trailing only Wordle. It’s a deceptively simple premise. Sixteen words. Four groups. Four words per group. But the reality is a psychological minefield designed to exploit how our brains categorize information.
The Brutal Architecture of the Grid
Most people think Connections is a vocabulary test. It isn't. It’s a test of cognitive flexibility and restraint. The game designers utilize something called "overlap" to mess with your head. This isn't just a casual design choice; it's the core mechanic that makes groups of four NYT so addictive and, frankly, infuriating.
Take a look at a classic bait-and-switch. You might see the words "Hammer," "Screwdriver," "Drill," and "Gimlet." Your brain screams "Tools!" But wait. "Gimlet" is also a cocktail. If "Martini," "Manhattan," and "Daiquiri" are also on the board, you’ve just been lured into a trap. This is what Liu calls the "red herring." The game thrives on these lexical ambiguities where a single word lives in two houses at once, and your job is to figure out which house is currently on fire.
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The difficulty is color-coded, though the game doesn't tell you which is which until you solve them. Straightforward categories are Yellow. Green is a bit more abstract. Blue usually involves specific knowledge or slightly more complex wordplay. Purple? Purple is where the "words that start with a body part" or "homophones for Greek letters" live. It’s the group that makes you want to throw your phone across the room.
Why Your Brain Fails at Simple Grouping
Psychologically, we are hardwired to find patterns. It’s an evolutionary survival trait. If you see four things that look like berries, you think "food." In the context of groups of four NYT, this trait becomes a liability. The game forces you to ignore the most obvious pattern in favor of the most cohesive one.
Sometimes the connection isn't about what the words mean, but what they are. Are they all palindromes? Do they all follow the word "Blue"? (Blue Moon, Blue Jay, Blue Whale, Blue Blood). This shift from semantic meaning to structural form is what separates the casual players from the enthusiasts who have the NYT Games app pinned to their home screen.
The Rise of the Digital Watercooler
Connections didn't just happen; it was engineered to be shared. The grid of colored squares that you see on X (formerly Twitter) or in your family group chat is the ultimate low-stakes brag. It’s visual. It’s colorful. It tells a story of your struggle without saying a single word.
The community around these groups of four NYT has grown massive. You have "Connectioneers" on TikTok who film their live solves, sweating over the last two groups. There are subreddits dedicated to arguing whether a specific category was "fair" or if the editor was reaching. Honestly, that’s part of the fun. The subjective nature of some categories—like "Things that are sticky"—leads to a level of social engagement that a simple crossword often lacks.
Navigating the Editor's Mind
To get better at this, you have to stop thinking about the words and start thinking about Wyna Liu. She has mentioned in interviews that the process involves finding words with multiple meanings and then building a web of interference around them.
- The "One-Away" Trap: This is a specific psychological state. When the game tells you you're "one away," it triggers a dopamine hit that often leads to reckless guessing.
- The "Leftovers" Strategy: Many players solve the purple category by simply solving the other three and letting the last four words fall into place. The editors know this. They often make the third group (Blue) the hardest to actually spot, knowing people will "back into" the Purple solution.
How to Actually Win Without Losing Your Mind
If you're tired of seeing "Game Over" before you've even finished your coffee, you need a tactical shift.
- Don't click anything for the first minute. Seriously. Just look. If you see a group of five words that seem to fit together, you know for a fact that at least one of them belongs somewhere else.
- Look for the oddballs. If there's a word like "Krypton," don't just think "Superman." Think "Noble Gases." Then look for "Neon" or "Argon."
- Say the words out loud. Sometimes the connection is phonetic. "Knight," "Night," "Nate," "Natt." (Okay, that's a bad example, but you get the point).
- Check for "Fill-in-the-Blank." This is a staple of the groups of four NYT. If you see "Box," "Fire," "Work," and "Station," you’re looking at things that follow the word "Fire" (Firebox, Firework, Fire station... wait, that doesn't work). See? It's harder than it looks.
The game is a reminder that language is messy. It’s a collection of sounds and symbols that we’ve collectively agreed have meaning, but those meanings are fluid and overlapping. Every morning, millions of people engage in this brief, intense struggle with linguistics. It’s a tiny bit of friction in an otherwise automated world.
Actionable Steps for Your Next Solve
To move from a guesser to a strategist in the groups of four NYT, start keeping a "trap log." Notice when you fall for a specific type of red herring—like words that can all be types of dogs versus words that are also verbs.
Next time you open the app, identify the two most "flexible" words on the board. These are words like "Bank" (a place for money, the side of a river, a shot in billiards). Do not commit those words to a group until you have cleared the more "rigid" words. For example, "Photosynthesis" usually only has one meaning in a puzzle. Solve around the rigid words to isolate the flexible ones. This reductionist approach will save your four allowed mistakes for when you truly need them on the Purple category.
Finally, recognize that some days the puzzle is just tuned to a different frequency than your brain. That’s okay. The beauty of the daily reset is that there’s always a new grid waiting tomorrow morning at midnight.