Connections is a game from the New York Times that challenges you to find the association between words. It sounds easy, but it isn’t—Connections categories can be almost anything, and they’re usually quite specific. If you need a hand getting the answers, we’ve got you covered.

What Is Connections?

Connections is a game from the New York Times. The objective is simple: sort 16 words into groups of 4. Each group of words will be connected by some common idea or theme. That common element could be anything. We have seen everything from games that rely on the number of letters in the words to categories that require you to spot an extra letter at the end of the word. Sometimes they’re references to economics, other times they reference fairy tales. There is no telling what sort of association there will be between words.

Once you’re confident you understand the connection, select 4 words, then hit “Submit.” You have only four attempts in total, so don’t be too guess-happy.

June 19th Connections words.

Hints for Today’s Connections Groups

Here are a few hints for the 377th Connections game to get you started:

How Did We Solve This Connections Game?

June 22nd was a little difficult for me, but there wasn’t anything spectacularly hard about it.

The first group I spotted was Purple, “Words for Sausage,” likely because I happened to be eating some sausage as I looked at the Connections game for the first time. Brat, dog, frank, and link are all words (or types) of sausage.

June 22nd Connections groups and words

I randomly jumped to the word string next;there was no particular reason. A “string of events” refers to a sequence or series of events, and that informed what sort of words I was looking for. Series is actually on the list, so I grabbed that. A “chain of events” is pretty much synonymous with string of events, so I went with chain, too. The only word besides link (which had already been used) that could possibly fit into the idea was train. Yellow, “One Thing After Another,” included the words chain, series, string, and train.

That left 8 words, none of which seemed to have any connection that I could suss out.

Eventually, after about 200 shuffles, Birds, Fog, Omen, and Ring wound up next to each other and I realized that they were all words in horror movie titles, specifically movies with titles of the form “The Ring,” “The Omen,” and so on. Blue was “Horror Movies, with The.”

That left driver, iron, wedge, and wood—words I couldn’t connect no matter how much I tried. They were actually in the Green group, “Kinds of Golf Clubs.” Turns out I just need to up my golf game.

How Do You Guess Connections Groups?

There is no quick, reliable way to approach Connections like there is with Wordle, since Connections isn’t algorithmic. However, there are a few things to keep in mind that can help.

If you didn’t solve this one, don’t feel too bad—there’s always tomorrow! And those words may align with a topic you’re interested in, giving you a leg up on the competition.