My first attempt at the game Connections did not get off to a good start. There was a grid of 16 words, and I’m supposed to pick out sets of four that each follow a theme. I went with rain, heat, snow, and sleet, only to be told that this was, somehow, wrong. Huh?
But a moment later that “huh” was replaced with an “aha.” Heat matched up with Jazz, Bucks, and Nets to make a set of NBA teams. Hail was the proper partner for the wet-weather words. Race car, which seemed to be an outlier—there were no other vehicles—turned out to be part of a set of palindromes.
That’s how you play the new puzzle game from the New York Times. The four sets of words are each color-coded according to their difficulty, and you’re allowed four “mistakes” (like my initial guess) before you officially lose. I only made that one mistake my first time, and solved the next day’s puzzle perfectly.
Connections (Puzzle #2)
