Happy Saturday, puzzle fanatics! If your brain is fried after a long week and you’re in need of some assistance with today’s Connections game, Newsweek has your back.
The popular brainteaser was launched by The New York Times in June 2023 and has gone on to become the publication’s second-most played game behind Wordle, another word-based puzzle.
“The response has been really incredible and overwhelming, and unexpected,” Wyna Liu, a puzzle editor at NYT who creates the Connections games, said in an interview with Newsweek. “It’s exciting that something I care very deeply about is resonating with people.”
Keep scrolling for Newsweek‘s best hints to crack today’s game. The answers to #643 will also be revealed at the bottom of this article.
How To Play ‘Connections’
Connections tasks players with grouping 16 words into four categories based on association.
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. That being said, the puzzles are rarely straightforward and often use homophones, wordplay and other techniques to challenge players.
For example, Friday’s game linked the words “candy,” “ChapStick,” charging cable” and “magazine” under the category, “Checkout-line impulse buys.” This was a green category.
Meanwhile, the blue category was “Movies of various lengths” and included the terms: “epic,” “feature,” “film series” and “short.”
“The game has evolved with the solvers, and responds to solvers’ experience and expectations,” Liu told Newsweek readers, adding that her “best advice” is to “wait as long as you can before guessing” and avoid “rage solving.”
You’ll be pleased to hear there is no time limit to the game, so you’re free to ponder the answers all day long if you’d like.
‘Connections’ #643 Hints and Clues for Saturday, March 15
Below are Newsweek‘s best hints to help you with Saturday’s game:
Yellow: Sharp things
Green: Musically related
Blue: Legal terms
Purple: Associated with a nursery rhyme
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‘Connections’ #643 Answers for Saturday, March 15
Yellow Category: SHARP PROTRUSION
Yellow Words: Barb, Bristle, Needle, Spine
Green Category: FEATURES OF STRINGED INSTRUMENTS
Green Words: Bridge, Neck, Peg, String
Blue Category: LITIGATION VERBS
Blue Words: Charge, Move, Serve, Sue
Purple Category: IN “STAR LIGHT, STAR BRIGHT”
Purple Words: May, Might, Tonight, Wish
Give yourself a round of applause if you answered all four Connections categories correctly—or even if you got one or two. You will get another chance on Sunday when a new game will be available for you to play.
Connections is released at midnight in your local time zone, so be sure to check back with Newsweek daily for more tips and answers.
Looking for another challenge this weekend? Check out these other popular word-based games.