If you’re lost on today’s NYT Connections #356, sometimes you just need a few hints to get the juices flowing. Here are some clues & the solutions.
Connections is approaching its first anniversary this June and remains one of The New York Times’ most popular offerings, second only to Wordle. The puzzle challenges players to identify the strongest links between a group of words. The goal is to sort 16 words into four groups of four by identifying common threads — without making more than four mistakes.
If you’re a new player, you might have noticed that the game often adds a fun (and sometimes frustrating) twist by having some words that seem to belong to more than one category. These are red herrings, and the game becomes more challenging as their number increases.
Today’s game (Connections #356) has quite a few of those fishy additions, which explains its difficulty rating of 3 out of 5. If you’re stuck in a rut, here’s a guide to help you crack the code without (any more) mistakes. We’ve compiled some hints that’ll help you arrive at the answers yourself, and if you prefer to cut to the chase, scroll to the bottom to see the solutions.How to play Connections
Each Connections puzzle features a 16-word grid from which you’re supposed to make four groups of words that share something in common. Per the NYT itself, these categories typically involve trivia (like band names or famous artists) or the meaning and structure of words (like synonyms or homophones).
Each group is color-coded according to its difficulty level. The yellow group is the easiest and most obvious connection, green and blue are medium, and purple is the trickiest of the bunch — usually super-specific, abstract themes that might leave you scratching your head even after you’ve figured out the answers, but don’t worry, that’s the fun of it.
