Most people play Connections in the order the colours suggest: find the easy group, then the next, and hope the last four sort themselves out. That order is the reason most people lose.
What the colours actually rank
| Colour | Difficulty | Usually grouped by |
|---|---|---|
| Yellow | Easiest | Plain meaning |
| Green | Moderate | Meaning, slightly narrower |
| Blue | Tricky | Abstract or less common associations |
| Purple | Hardest | Structure — wordplay, puns, hidden patterns |
Read the right-hand column again. Three of those categories answer what do these words mean. Purple usually answers a different question entirely: what do these words look like.
That is why staring harder at purple rarely works. You are searching for a meaning that is not there.
The trap
Purple does not simply sit in a corner being difficult. It is built out of trap words — words chosen precisely because they look like they belong to yellow, green or blue.
So the failure mode is not “I could not find purple”. It is: you found a convincing yellow group, submitted it, and one of the four was on loan to purple. A mistake, and the same trap is still sitting there.
The counting rule, which is the single most useful habit in this game. Before submitting any group, count how many words in the grid could plausibly fit it. If the answer is four, submit. If the answer is five or more, stop — at least one of those is borrowed by another category, and you have no way of knowing which. That situation is not a hard puzzle; it is a designed trap, and the correct response is to go and find purple instead.
How to actually spot purple
Stop reading the words as words. Scan for shape:
- A shared prefix or suffix. Every word takes the same addition — ___ + BALL, SUN + ___.
- A hidden smaller word. A short word buried inside each one.
- The same fill-in-the-blank. All four complete an identical phrase.
- A shared name. All four are surnames of people with the same first name, or vice versa.
- Homophones. The words sound like something else entirely.
If a group of four has nothing in common in meaning but something in common in form, that is purple, and you have just made the rest of the puzzle straightforward.
Why solving it first works
The grid has sixteen words. Purple is the only group actively designed to be ambiguous with the others.
Take purple out and you are left with twelve words in three groups that are sorted by ordinary meaning, with no deliberate misdirection remaining. That is a much easier puzzle than the one you started with — and, crucially, you have spent none of your four mistakes getting there.
Play in colour order instead and you meet the traps while you still have all sixteen words on the board, which is exactly when they work best.
The one caveat
Some days purple genuinely is a meaning category, and some days blue is the one doing the wordplay. The colours are a difficulty ranking, not a promise about method.
Which is why the counting rule matters more than the strategy: it works regardless of which group is being difficult on any given day. Four candidates, submit. Five, wait.
Connections is a daily word game published by The New York Times in which sixteen words are sorted into four groups of four, with categories colour-coded by difficulty from yellow through green and blue to purple, and with four mistakes permitted. The characterisation of yellow as the most straightforward category, green as moderate, blue as more abstract, and purple as the hardest — relying on wordplay, puns, hidden patterns, fill-in-the-blank constructions, shared names and deliberately misleading trap words — reflects descriptions published in strategy coverage of the game. This article contains no answers or hints for any specific puzzle. The strategy advice, including the counting rule and the recommendation to identify the hardest group first, is the author’s and is not endorsed by or affiliated with The New York Times.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
What do the colours mean in Connections?
They rank difficulty. Yellow is the most straightforward group, green is moderate, blue is tricky and often more abstract, and purple is the hardest.
Why is purple the hardest?
Because it usually is not a category of meaning at all. Yellow, green and blue group words by what they mean; purple tends to group them by wordplay, hidden patterns, puns or shared names — and it is built to mislead.
What is a trap word?
A word placed in the grid that looks like it belongs to an easier category but actually belongs to purple. It is the main way the puzzle generates mistakes.
Should I really solve purple first?
It is the more reliable order for most players. Purple borrows its words from the other groups, so identifying it removes the traps and leaves the remaining twelve words much easier to sort.
How do I spot a purple category?
Look for structure rather than meaning: words that all take the same prefix or suffix, all contain a hidden smaller word, all fit the same fill-in-the-blank, or are all shared with the same famous name.
How many mistakes am I allowed?
Four. That is the whole budget, which is why guessing a group you are only mostly sure about is expensive.
