Games like Connections, and one where the pattern is a colour.

What Connections is

Connections is a daily word puzzle from The New York Times Games, first published in 2023. You get sixteen words and sort them into four groups of four that share something, with four mistakes allowed. The groups are colour-coded by difficulty, yellow to purple, and the share is a grid of coloured squares that shows how you did without giving the words away.

What makes it satisfying is the red herring: words that seem to fit two groups, so the game is less about knowing and more about noticing which reading the setter meant.

What to look for in a game like it

• One puzzle a day, the same for everybody, so comparing notes works.
• Decoys that are genuinely tempting. A wrong answer that could be right turns a quiz into a puzzle.
• Reasoning over recall, and a share that does not spoil it.

How Huezle is similar, and different

Huezle is a daily puzzle too: one strip a day, the same for everyone. The strip is a row of coloured bands drawn from real data, and you pick which of four answers made it. The wrong answers come from the same category and are chosen because their strips look alike, so elimination alone will not get you there.

The difference is that Connections is about words and Huezle is about shapes. You read where a strip is bright, where it is dark and where it turns, and ask which answer would leave that shape behind. Each category has its own legend: in Baby Names a band is how common a name was, in TV Shows how well an episode was rated.

Four strips to try

18802024

• Rare
• Common
• Everywhere

Jennifer peaks in 1973 at 4.3% of US girls born. A sharp peak in the middle of the strip is a name of one generation, and where the peak sits tells you which.

PremiereFinale

• Low rated
• Average
• High rated

One band per episode, coloured by IMDb rating. Counting bands is the first clue here: thirteen episodes rules out most network sitcoms at once.

Left edge of the coverRight edge of the cover

• Left side of the cover
• Middle of the cover
• Right side of the cover

Album strips are the cover itself, cut into twelve slices and read left to right. Four bands of black, then a run of colour: you may already be picturing the sleeve.

Matchday 1Matchday 38

• Bottom of the table
• Mid-table
• Top of the table

One band per matchday, coloured by place in the table. A strip that is one colour almost end to end is a runaway title; this one finished on 99 points.

Side by side

They sit well together: Connections for words, Huezle for data. See also games like Wordle and the best daily puzzle games for iPhone. How to play explains reading a strip, and the daily puzzle is free.

Questions