'Connections' March 23: Hints and Answers for Puzzle #651

Newsweek is back to help with another round of hints and solutions for Sunday’s Connectionsgame from The New York Times.

Each daily puzzle consists of 16 words which must be separated into four categories. Players must identify the common thread between each category: yellow, green, blue, and purple. If you need an example, one previous puzzle saw the words “bumpy,” “rough,” “rugged,” and “uneven” joined together to make the category “not smooth.”

Players can sometimes find themselves tricked by the fact that words can fit into two categories. Even if it may be designed to confuse the player, each group can only have four unique words.

The difficulty increases according to color, with yellow being the most straightforward, followed by green, then blue and finally purple, which is considered the most difficult, and is usually the most abstract.

The game’s editor, Wyna Liu of the Times, said there are varying levels of difficulty between the categories given each day.

“Some categories might be defined by their use of wordplay—palindromes, homophones, adding or dropping letters and words —rather than the literal meanings of the words on the cards. I saw three areas of potential difficulty that could be adjusted: the familiarity of the words, the ambiguity of their categorization and the variety of the wordplay,” she said.

When asked what tips she can provide players, Liu said: “One suggestion that may help save some guesses is if you start selecting cards and notice that there are five or more that belong to that category, try pivoting to a different category before making that first guess.”

Below are some tips to help you keep your Connections winning streak—but scroll with caution if you want to figure out the answers without any spoilers.