Connections

Yes, Connections is completely free. Free Play deals you a hand-built puzzle at random, as many times as you like. A free account unlocks Competitive mode with curated daily puzzles, points and leaderboard rankings.

You have four guesses to find all four groups. Each incorrect guess costs one of your four attempts. If you use all four guesses without completing the board, the remaining groups are revealed. In Competitive mode, fewer mistakes earn significantly more points.

Each of the four groups is assigned a difficulty color. Yellow is the easiest and most straightforward category. Green is a moderate challenge. Blue is tricky and often involves wordplay or less obvious connections. Purple is the hardest and most deceptive, frequently relying on obscure knowledge, double meanings, or creative associations.

There is no time limit. You can take as long as you need to study the 16 words and find the groups. However, completion time is tracked invisibly and serves as a tiebreaker on the monthly leaderboard when players have equal point totals. Faster solves give you an edge in close competitions.

It means three of the four words you submitted belong to the same group and one does not. It is the most useful message in the game: you have found a real group and only picked the wrong fourth word, so swapping one word at a time will usually get you there. It still costs you a mistake, and you get four in total.