The New York Times published the 1,224th edition of its Connections word puzzle on Saturday, October 17, 2026, and several outlets, including Mashable, marked the date by posting hints and solutions for players. Mashable reported that the day's puzzle is not especially hard for people who are used to playing on their phones.
Connections asks players to sort 16 words into four groups of four, with each group tied together by a shared trait. Mashable notes that the puzzle has become a social media hit and that the Times credits associate puzzle editor Wyna Liu with helping to create it and bring it to the paper's Games section.
Why it matters
Connections has joined Wordle as one of the Times' most visible daily word games, and its format has made it a routine for a large online audience. According to Mashable, the game is built around finding "common threads between words," and it resets at midnight, with each new set of words growing harder than the last. That daily cycle is what keeps players returning and what drives the steady stream of hint and answer articles from outlets such as Mashable, Forbes, CNET and Lifehacker on the day each puzzle goes live.
The puzzle's spread also reflects a broader pattern in digital publishing: a single daily game can generate same-day coverage across multiple tech and culture sites, each competing to help players who are stuck without spoiling the answer too early.
How the puzzle works
Each Connections board holds 16 words, and players must divide them into four categories of four. Mashable reports that the categories can cover almost anything, from book titles and software to country names. The challenge is that several words may appear to belong together, but only one arrangement is correct.
When a player picks all four words in a set correctly, those words leave the board. A wrong guess costs one of the four mistakes a player is allowed before the game ends. Mashable notes that players can rearrange and shuffle the board to make connections easier to spot.
The groups are also color-coded by difficulty, according to Mashable: yellow is the simplest, followed by green, blue and purple. As with Wordle, players can share their results with friends on social media.
Hints without spoilers
For players who want a nudge rather than the full solution, Mashable's article offers hints about the categories before revealing them, and it places the answers at the end so readers can stop before seeing them. The piece also points readers toward the Times' Strands puzzle and toward Mashable's own games hub, which includes Mahjong, Sudoku and a free crossword.
The Times itself published its own answers page for the October 17 puzzle, and Forbes, Lifehacker and CNET each ran their own hint and answer pieces for the same date, a sign of how reliably the daily game draws coverage.
Players who missed Saturday's board can expect the next puzzle to appear after midnight, when the game resets and a fresh, typically tougher set of words takes its place.
