Games like Connections: daily word puzzles for when you’ve found all four groups

The short answer

If you love Connections, look for a puzzle that is small, daily and ends in an “oh, of course!” moment. Which kind suits you depends on what you enjoy most about it:

• The sorting: more grouping puzzles, including ones you can make yourself.
• The meaning: hot and cold games that judge a guess by what the word means.
• The letters: letter-grid hunts like Strands or a classic word search.
• The deduction: five-letter guessing games like Wordle and its many cousins.
• The wordplay: mini crosswords and cryptic crosswords.

Each kind is below, with what it asks of you and who tends to love it.

1. Grouping puzzles: more of the sorting

In Connections you get sixteen words and have to split them into four hidden groups of four. The fun is the red herring: the word that seems to fit two groups at once. British readers will know the same feeling from the connecting wall on the TV quiz Only Connect.

You don’t need an app for more of this. Here’s a small grid made for this article. Sixteen words, four groups:

cup · piano · ash · palm · pan · keyboard · pine · thumb · cheese · lock · birch · knuckle · carrot · typewriter · cedar · nail

Take a minute before you read on. The trap is palm.

Answer: things that come before cake (cup, pan, cheese, carrot); things with keys (piano, keyboard, lock, typewriter); trees (ash, pine, birch, cedar); parts of a hand (palm, thumb, knuckle, nail). Palm looks like a fifth tree, but the trees already have four.

Making a grid like this for family or friends is a game in itself. Pick four groups, hide one word that could belong to two of them, and send it in a message.

2. Meaning games: hot and cold with words

This is the closest cousin in spirit, and the kind many Connections players haven’t tried yet. Think about what you actually do in Connections: you ask why words belong together. Not how they’re spelled, but what they mean. Meaning games take that one step further.

You guess a secret word, and every guess tells you how close it is in meaning. Semantle is an English game of this kind. Contexto plays in English, Spanish and Portuguese. Warmer Warmer gives every guess a temperature, the way the old children’s game of hot and cold works: freezing, cold, cool, lukewarm, warm, hot, scorching, and “Found it!” at the top. There’s one secret word a day, the same for everyone. It’s free and runs in the browser, with no app and no sign-up.

Here’s how a game could go when the secret word is buoy:

1. pencil37 °FFreezing: wrong drawer entirely
2. sea126 °FWarm: water was the right idea
3. boat145 °FWarm: something out on the waves
4. float172 °FHot: it bobs on the surface
5. beacon189 °FScorching: a marker that warns ships
6. buoyFound it!

Notice the Connections habit at work. Float and beacon are like two members of a group: put them together, a floating marker that warns ships, and the last word is easy.

Try it now: what’s your first guess?

Guess

Your word goes straight into today’s game.

3. Letter-grid hunts: Strands and the word search

In Strands you find themed words hidden in a grid of letters. A classic word search works the same way without the theme puzzle on top. These suit people who like to scan, spot and circle, and who enjoy the slow calm of tracing a word with a finger.

If the best part of Connections for you is working out the theme, Strands is a good next stop, because guessing the theme is half the game.

4. Five-letter guessing: Wordle and its cousins

Wordle gives you six tries to guess a five-letter word, and colors tell you which letters are right and where they sit. Its many cousins add more boards, other topics or longer words.

These games are about deduction. You rule letters out, keep the ones that work and narrow it down step by step. If you like the part of Connections where you lock in the obvious group first to make the rest easier, you’ll feel at home.

5. Crosswords, mini and cryptic

A mini crossword takes a few minutes and fits a coffee break. A cryptic crossword, a favorite in British newspapers, hides a definition and a piece of wordplay in every clue. Both reward a wide vocabulary and a willingness to read a clue sideways, which is exactly what a good Connections red herring asks of you.

How Connections skills carry over

The questions that help in Connections help in a meaning game too:

1. What group is this word in? Your warmest guess is a member of some group. Name the group, then try its other members.
2. Watch for the red herring. A word can be warm for the wrong reason. Palm is warm for a hand and for a tree. If a guess is warm but its neighbors stay cold, try the word’s other meaning.
3. Lock in the obvious first. Start with a few wide guesses (an animal, a food, a place, a feeling) and build on the warmest one.

A ten-minute morning stack

You don’t have to choose. A small routine works well: one grouping puzzle, one letter game and one meaning game, in that order, with the first coffee of the day. It keeps the mind busy and gives the morning a pleasant shape.

And when one secret word a day isn’t enough, there’s more once you’ve found it. A free account opens the Hot Word, one harder word for the whole week, and the Trail, four secret words in a row where each leads to the next, with a new Trail every week.

Which one is best?

Honestly, there isn’t one. Connections, Strands, Wordle and a crossword all exercise slightly different things, and that’s why they sit so well side by side. Try a meaning game for a week and see whether it earns its place in your stack.

If you’d like to read more about the meaning family, start with games like Semantle. For what a first week with a daily secret word feels like, there’s a first-week diary. And the rules from the very beginning are in the hot and cold word game.