Every day, over 9 million players play Connections, making it the second-most-popular word game from the NYT factory, after Wordle. As a word games website passionate about data, we collected all previous answers and over 60,000 user posts from Reddit’s Connections thread to present you with the most interesting insights into the game.
Report highlights
- 57% of players manage to solve Connections without any mistakes, 16.5% make one mistake, 9.4% solve with two mistakes, and 9.3% make three mistakes.
- 9.1% of Connections players fail to solve the daily puzzle, but some puzzles are unsolvable for over 55% of players.
- The average skill level of Connection players is 88.08, which roughly equates to solving the puzzle while making one wrong guess.
- Puzzle #375, released on June 20th, 2024, has the hardest Connections daily puzzle so far.
- 42% of all words used in Connections appeared on at least two different daily puzzles, while 58% of words were unique.
- BALL has been the most common word in daily puzzles with 25 different appearances.
- GUIDE has been the word that most daily players managed to connect with its group.
- On the other hand, SINK has been the word that most players struggled to match with one of the four groups.
- Over 80% of all Connections groups are either synonyms, definitions, or idioms.
Jump to section
- NYT Connections average scores, skill levels, and failure rate
- Hardest Connections puzzles
- Most used words in Connections
- Most common themes in Connections
Average Scores, Skill Levels, and Failure Rate
As of January 2026, most NYT Connections players who manage to solve the daily puzzle do it without making any mistakes. The average number of guesses to complete the puzzle stands at 4.65, and we notice that players have become better at solving puzzles over time.
More than half of Connections’ daily players complete the game without making any mistakes. We can also see that the smallest group of Connections players is the one that solves daily puzzles while making 3 mistakes, the most a player is allowed to make and still solve the puzzle.
| Guesses to solve | % of players |
| 4 | 57.0% |
| 5 | 16.5% |
| 6 | 9.3% |
| 7 | 8.1% |
| Failed | 9.1% |
Every puzzle, whether completed or not, is measured by skill level according to the NYT Connections Bot. The lowest skill score is 50 (no groups found), and it can go as high as 99 (no mistakes made + groups found in reverse order). So what is the average skill level of NYT Connections players?
According to our analysis, the average skill score for the daily puzzle is 88.08, which roughly equates to solving the puzzle with 1 mistake made. When it comes to maximum skill scores, 8.51% of players managed to get 99 skill points so far.
The following graph shows the average skill score for every NYT Connections puzzle over time. Notice how the trendline tilts slightly upwards, signaling that the players have become more skilled over time:
How many players fail to solve the NYT Connections puzzle?
Unfortunately, not every Connections puzzle is a slam dunk. In fact, we’ve seen some streak-ending puzzles over time, with more than half of players failing to complete them.
On average, 9.08% of daily Connections players don’t complete the puzzle. For comparison, this is several times Wordle’s fail rate, and it doesn’t come as a surprise.
As already shown, the average skill of Connections players has increased over time, and the opposite trend is apparent when it comes to failing to solve it.
Among players who failed at the daily puzzle, over half of them manage to solve two categories before making the fourth mistake. I bit under a third of them solve at least one category, while one in 6 makes all four mistakes without solving any category prior.
| Players failing to solve the puzzle | % of failed puzzles |
| Fail without solving any group | 17.30% |
| Fail while solving 1 category | 30.10% |
| Fail while solving 2 categories | 52.10% |
Which Connections groups are solved the most?
As you already know, NYT connections has 16 words divided into four groups. Ranked from easiest to hardest, these groups are: yellow, green, blue, and purple. The obvious thing would be to expect that most players solve the daily puzzle exactly in that order.
However, since bonus points are awarded for solving harder groups first, the reality is a bit different; most players first solve either the easiest group (32.9%) or the most difficult group (27.3%).
| Group | Solved first | Solved second | Solved third | Solved fourth |
| Yellow | 32.9% | 25.3% | 20.6% | 22.6% |
| Green | 21.9% | 30.3% | 31.6% | 17.3% |
| Blue | 17.9% | 30.1% | 28.4% | 22.6% |
| Purple | 27.3% | 14.4% | 19.3% | 37.4% |
But it’s not always possible to solve Connections in reverse. This is why most players save the purple group for the last – almost 40% of them complete the puzzle with the hardest group.
Anyone playing Connections regularly knows how frustrating it is to see that “One away…” notification when submitting the attempt. So close, yet so far.
We already talked about bonus skill points. How often do players manage to get them, and which ones?
Our analysis shows that 51.3% of players score at least one bonus point while playing the daily puzzle, most of whom get exactly one point for solving a blue group first. Since it’s hardest to pull off, reverse rainbow is the rarest bonus category, as only 9.70% of all players get 4 extra points for solving groups in reverse order.
| Bonus | % of players |
| Blue solved first | 17.00% |
| Purple solved first | 12.30% |
| Purple and blue first two | 14.10% |
| Reverse rainbow | 9.70% |
The data also show the most common solving combinations among Connections players. Two of the most frequent solving patterns are “regular” and reverse order, with 20.7% of players solving the puzzle in either order.
| Winning combination | % of games | Bonus points |
| 🟨🟪🟩🟦 | 3.40% | None |
| 🟩🟨🟪🟦 | 4.80% | None |
| 🟪🟨🟦🟩 | 3.00% | 2 |
| 🟩🟨🟦🟪 | 7.50% | None |
| 🟨🟦🟩🟪 | 6.10% | None |
| 🟪🟨🟩🟦 | 3.70% | 2 |
| 🟦🟨🟩🟪 | 5.20% | 1 |
| 🟩🟪🟦🟨 | 1.70% | None |
| 🟨🟩🟪🟦 | 5.60% | None |
| 🟦🟪🟨🟩 | 2.00% | 1 |
| 🟨🟪🟦🟩 | 2.40% | None |
| 🟦🟨🟪🟩 | 2.30% | 1 |
| 🟨🟦🟪🟩 | 2.70% | None |
| 🟨🟩🟦🟪 | 10.00% | None |
| 🟦🟩🟨🟪 | 4.50% | 1 |
| 🟩🟦🟨🟪 | 4.10% | None |
| 🟩🟪🟨🟦 | 2.10% | None |
| 🟪🟦🟨🟩 | 4.90% | 3 |
| 🟪🟦🟩🟨 | 10.70% | 4 |
| 🟩🟦🟪🟨 | 1.80% | None |
| 🟪🟩🟦🟨 | 3.70% | 2 |
| 🟦🟪🟩🟨 | 2.50% | 1 |
| 🟦🟩🟪🟨 | 2.20% | 1 |
| 🟪🟩🟨🟦 | 3.10% | 2 |
Hardest NYT Connections Puzzles
Based on over 60,000 Reddit posts with shared results, Connections puzzle with the highest fail rate among players is puzzle #375, released on June 20th, 2024. Over 47% of players failed to connect words into all 4 groups on that day. Counting only successful games, the hardest Connections puzzle is #266, released on March 3rd, 2024. The average player managed to solve this puzzle in 5.74 guesses.
Puzzle #916 has also been the hardest puzzle in terms of the average skill score of daily players (65.68), and puzzle #375 scored the highest on our Trouble Index value (87.3).
Connections puzzles with the highest fail rate
One reliable way to measure how difficult the daily Connections puzzle was is to look at how many players failed to solve the puzzle by making more than 3 wrong guesses. Our analysis of the average Connections scores shows that the average puzzle has a failure rate of just over 9%, but some puzzles are far trickier than average.
Based on our data, Connections puzzle #375 is the hardest puzzle yet released, as over 47% of players didn’t get to match all 16 words into 4 groups successfully. Here is a list of 10 hardest Connections puzzles so far, based on the % of failed games:
| Puzzle | Fail % |
| 375 | 47.22% |
| 385 | 43.30% |
| 351 | 38.98% |
| 632 | 36.62% |
| 465 | 36.56% |
| 807 | 34.09% |
| 843 | 33.65% |
| 692 | 33.33% |
| 940 | 32.18% |
| 916 | 31.58% |
Connections puzzles with the most average guesses to solve
When we focus only on solved puzzles for a moment, which one took the most attempts on average to complete? This is another way to look at puzzle difficulty: how many mistakes players have to make in order to reveal all four groups.
Looking at it that way, the daily Connections puzzle released on March 3rd, 2024, #266, was the hardest one to complete – the average player managed to solve it in 5.74 attempts, making almost 2 wrong guesses. The following table contains 10 Connections puzzles with the highest average number of guesses to complete, not counting failed games:
| Puzzle | Average score |
| 266 | 5.74 |
| 375 | 5.63 |
| 460 | 5.59 |
| 410 | 5.54 |
| 385 | 5.53 |
| 355 | 5.51 |
| 437 | 5.45 |
| 268 | 5.4 |
| 302 | 5.4 |
| 692 | 5.38 |
In order to take both fail % and average guesses into account for our puzzle difficulty analysis, we created a new metric – Trouble Index, which combines the two into one value, ranging from 0 to 100. The higher the Trouble Index value is, the more difficult the puzzle is to solve.
According to our Trouble Index, these are the 10 hardest Connections puzzles so far:
| Puzzle | Trouble index |
| 375 | 87.3 |
| 385 | 85.3 |
| 266 | 84.6 |
| 692 | 81.7 |
| 460 | 81.7 |
| 632 | 81.6 |
| 355 | 81.4 |
| 843 | 81.2 |
| 437 | 81.1 |
| 283 | 80.9 |
Connections puzzle with the lowest player skill score
There is one more metric that can indicate how easy/hard the daily Connections puzzle was, and that is the skill score provided by Connection Bot after the completion of the game. The creators of NYT Connections made the scoring system publicly available, so we were able to calculate it for each of over 50,000 games in our database.
For the purpose of this analysis, we ranked daily puzzles by lowest average skill score, and puzzle #916 proved to be the toughest one to crack. The following table contains a list of 10 Connections puzzles with the lowest average player skill score:
| Puzzle | Average skill |
| 916 | 65.68 |
| 935 | 66.96 |
| 940 | 67.49 |
| 375 | 69.56 |
| 958 | 70.38 |
| 950 | 70.61 |
| 385 | 74.71 |
| 953 | 75.39 |
| 351 | 75.88 |
| 961 | 75.97 |
Most Used Words in NYT Connections
Even though every Connections puzzle is unique, not all words are new or unused. In fact, almost half of all the words that appeared in daily puzzles so far were already used in some of the previous ones. In this report, we look into the most used words in Connections, as well as which words were in the groups that players most/least successfully solved.
Fir this purpose, we collected answers from all previous Connections puzzles from our past Connections archive.
Which words have been the most used in Connections?
Before we dive into rankings, let’s look at the overall picture. As of January 2026, exactly 15,374 words were part of the Connections daily puzzles. Of that number:
- 7,122 unique words have been used
- 4,120 words appeared only once in daily puzzles
- 3,002 words, or 42%, appeared at least in two daily puzzles.
Now that we know that 4 out of 10 words used in Connections appear in multiple daily puzzles, let’s take a look at which ones have been featured the most. The following table contains the 20 most used words in NYT Connections:
| Rank | Word | Daily puzzles containing the word |
| 1 | BALL | 25 |
| 2 | RING | 20 |
| 3 | WING | 19 |
| 4 | BAR | 19 |
| 5 | HEART | 17 |
| 6 | SPLIT | 17 |
| 7 | STAR | 17 |
| 8 | FLY | 17 |
| 9 | STICK | 16 |
| 10 | LOVE | 16 |
| 11 | JACK | 16 |
| 12 | CAN | 16 |
| 13 | DROP | 15 |
| 14 | LEAD | 15 |
| 15 | ROCK | 15 |
| 16 | BLUE | 15 |
| 17 | BABY | 15 |
| 18 | EGG | 15 |
| 19 | FISH | 15 |
| 20 | KING | 15 |
We also examined the length of Connections terms, and the data show that 97.16% of them are one-word terms, while 2.83% have two or more words.
Among repeating words, are there any that stand out in terms of solve rate, both in the positive and the negative way? It turns out there are – this is a list of top20 Connections repeating words with the highest Solve Index:
| Rank | Word | Daily puzzle appearances | Solve index |
| 1 | GUIDE | 10 | 99.5% |
| 2 | SQUARE | 6 | 99.3% |
| 3 | PEN | 6 | 99.0% |
| 4 | HARP | 6 | 98.9% |
| 5 | SWIPE | 6 | 98.9% |
| 6 | DRAIN | 6 | 98.8% |
| 7 | MONITOR | 6 | 98.8% |
| 8 | OVER | 6 | 98.7% |
| 9 | BILL | 10 | 98.7% |
| 10 | MAJOR | 6 | 98.5% |
| 11 | PLAIN | 7 | 98.4% |
| 12 | TRACK | 9 | 98.4% |
| 13 | FICTION | 6 | 98.3% |
| 14 | PRINCIPAL | 6 | 98.3% |
| 15 | GOAT | 7 | 98.3% |
| 16 | LEAD | 15 | 98.2% |
| 17 | STORY | 6 | 98.2% |
| 18 | LIKE | 7 | 98.1% |
| 19 | SWING | 7 | 98.0% |
| 20 | WATCH | 7 | 98.0% |
On the other hand, some terms used in daily puzzles are in groups with the lowest Solve Index, and players had the most trouble matching groups containing the following words:
| Rank | Word | Daily puzzle appearances | Solve index |
| 1 | SINK | 7 | 78.40% |
| 2 | BUG | 9 | 82.30% |
| 3 | ROD | 7 | 82.70% |
| 4 | PUMP | 8 | 82.90% |
| 5 | NAIL | 7 | 83.20% |
| 6 | SCOOP | 6 | 83.20% |
| 7 | STRIKE | 8 | 84.30% |
| 8 | DIAL | 6 | 84.80% |
| 9 | TIGER | 6 | 85.00% |
| 10 | CHIP | 6 | 85.20% |
| 11 | BOAT | 7 | 85.60% |
| 12 | RIB | 6 | 86.40% |
| 13 | FLAT | 7 | 86.60% |
| 14 | NOSE | 7 | 86.80% |
| 15 | BOLT | 10 | 87.20% |
| 16 | COAT | 8 | 87.20% |
| 17 | MIRROR | 11 | 87.30% |
| 18 | CHAIR | 10 | 87.40% |
| 19 | DRAG | 6 | 87.40% |
| 20 | RAT | 7 | 87.70% |
Most common themes in Connections
When solving Connections, one of the most effective strategies is to identify common themes. We divided all previous Connections’ groups into the following categories:
- Affixes & Linguistics
- Concrete Objects / Real-World Things
- Definitions / Synonyms
- Domain-Specific Knowledge
- Idioms / Usage / Tone
- Pop Culture / Proper Nouns
- Wordplay: Phrase Completion
- Wordplay: Structural Transformation
From the given categories, over 80% of all Connections groups fall into either definitions & synonyms (43.50%) or idioms, usage & tone (38.20%). However, there is a big difference between the groups.
For example, the wordplay category has never been assigned to a yellow group. On the other hand, almost half (47%) of all purple groups in past Connections puzzles were some type of wordplay. Here is a full breakdown of all categories by their appearance in each group:
| Category | Total appearances | Yellow | Green | Blue | Purple |
| Affixes & Linguistics | 0.80% | 0.0% | 1.0% | 1.0% | 1.0% |
| Concrete Objects / Real-World Things | 3.70% | 3.0% | 4.0% | 6.0% | 2.0% |
| Definition / Synonym | 43.50% | 64.0% | 56.0% | 41.0% | 14.0% |
| Domain-Specific Knowledge | 1.10% | 0.0% | 1.0% | 2.0% | 1.0% |
| Idioms / Usage / Tone | 38.20% | 33.0% | 37.0% | 48.0% | 36.0% |
| Pop Culture / Proper Nouns | 0.30% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 1.0% | 1.0% |
| Wordplay: Phrase Completion | 9.40% | 0.0% | 1.0% | 1.0% | 36.0% |
| Wordplay: Structural Transformation | 2.90% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 1.0% | 11.0% |