Connections colors explained: yellow, green, blue and purple

The four colors, one by one

Yellow is the most straightforward group. It is almost always a plain meaning link: a set of synonyms, or an everyday category you can name in a few words. On October 25, 2026, yellow was STEAL, with BOOST, PALM, POCKET and SWIPE. On October 15, 2026, it was WAYS TO PRESERVE FOOD: CURE, DRY, PICKLE and SMOKE. If a group explains itself the moment you see it, it is probably yellow.

Green is a step less obvious. The link is still about meaning, but the set is tighter, or you have to know the four as a set. Green on October 25, 2026 was PASTA SHAPES, and on October 27, 2026 it was PARTS OF THE EAR: ANVIL, CANAL, DRUM and STIRRUP, four words that also live ordinary lives outside the ear, which is exactly the kind of overlap green trades in.

Blue is where specialist knowledge and the first wordplay show up. Blue groups are often named sets you either know or you do not: NASA MARS ROVERS on October 28, 2026, and FAMOUS PAINTINGS on October 21, 2026. But blue can also carry a trick: on October 16, 2026, blue was EUROPEAN COUNTRIES MINUS A LETTER, with BULGARI, CYRUS, HUNGRY and SPAN, each one letter short of a country.

Purple is the trickiest group, and it is usually wordplay. The four words often share nothing in meaning at all; what they share is a shape, a sound, or a partner word. Purple on October 24, 2026 was ___ BAR, completed by CANDY, SALAD, SPACE and SPORTS. Purple on October 28, 2026 was HOMOPHONES OF PATHS: COARSE, RODE, ROUT and WEIGH, which sound like course, road, route and way when you say them out loud.

One caution that applies to all four: the color is revealed only when a group is solved, never before. A group that feels easy can still be a harder color in disguise, and a group you crack by wordplay early is a real find, because it removes four decoys from every other group on the board.

What our archive shows

We counted the 20 most recent puzzles in this site's verified archive, October 9 to 28, 2026: 80 groups in all, 20 of each color. The pattern behind the colors is consistent enough to plan around.

Yellow was meaning-based 20 times out of 20. Every yellow group in the run is a synonym set or a plain category, from STATUS and FINISH to KINDS OF STRIPS and PLACES TO STORE CLOTHES. No yellow group in the run uses a wordplay frame, a hidden word, or a fill-in-the-blank title.

Purple was wordplay 19 times out of 20. Fill-in-the-blank frames, words that start or end with a hidden word, homophones, and letter changes account for 19 of the 20 purple groups. The one exception is October 25, 2026, where purple was THINGS THAT CAN BE SNAPPED: FINGERS, FOOTBALL, GLOW STICK and RUBBER BAND, a plain category wearing the hardest color, and a good reminder that purple is a difficulty rating, not a guarantee of a trick.

The fill-in-the-blank frame is the single most reused trick. Eight of the 80 groups are titled with a blank, like AIR ___ or ___ TAP: seven of them purple, and one blue. The blue one is the odd board of October 27, 2026, which carried two blank groups at once: ___ BELL in blue and BELL ___ in purple.

Wordplay climbs down the colors before it reaches purple. Alongside the blue letter group above, blue also carried WORD SHORTENINGS, OFTEN on October 12, 2026 and SUPERHEROES, WITH "THE" on October 14, 2026. Green and yellow stayed literal for the whole run. As a working rule: the further a group's link is from plain meaning, the harder its color is likely to be.

The category patterns the NYT reuses

Synonym sets, titled with one word. The title is itself one answer's meaning: STEAL, FINISH, PRESUME, TOLERATE. These are the bread and butter of yellow and green, and the fastest groups to test: if four words mean the same thing, say so and submit.

Kinds, parts, and things that do something. KINDS OF CRABS, PARTS OF THE EAR, THINGS THAT COME IN STICKS, THINGS YOU CAN SCORE IN SPORTS. A title built on kinds, parts or things is a plain category wearing work clothes, and it can land at any of the first three colors depending on how obscure the set is.

Fill in the blank. Every word in the group pairs with the same partner word, before it or after it: ___ BAR, AIR ___, LA ___, BELL ___. This is the most common purple frame in our archive, and the test is mechanical: say each board word with a partner in front of it and behind it, and listen for four that share one.

Starts and ends. The shared piece hides at the edge of each word: STARTING WITH WORDS FOR "STYLISH" gave CHICKEN, COOLIDGE, HIPPO and SMARTIES, which start with chic, cool, hip and smart. ENDING IN BIRDS and STARTS OF BEDDING work the same trick from the other end and the first letters.

Letter and sound play. A letter added, removed or changed, or a word you have to hear rather than read: EUROPEAN COUNTRIES MINUS A LETTER, HORROR MOVIES WITH LAST LETTER CHANGED, HOMOPHONES OF DISNEY CHARACTERS, and WORDS MADE USING U.S. POSTAL ABBREVIATIONS. If four words look like near-misses of real words, this is the pattern to test.

Named sets. Four proper names that belong to one list: FAMOUS PAINTINGS, NASA MARS ROVERS, FICTIONAL TOMS, FAMOUS PERFUMES. These reward knowledge more than wordplay, and they are the groups most likely to strand a fifth decoy name on the board, so count the candidates before you submit.

How to read a board with the colors in mind

You are hunting one of each color, not four plain categories. If you can see five or six plausible meaning groups, at least one of them is a decoy, and the real group it is hiding is probably built on wordplay. The board is constructed so the colors mislead as a set.

Submit the group you can name in one plain sentence first. That group is most likely yellow or green, and clearing it removes four words that were planted to confuse the groups underneath. Our daily hint pages open the same way, easiest group first.

When the last four words make no sense together, stop reading them for meaning. Say them out loud for homophones, put a blank before and after each one, and look at their first and last letters. What is left at the end of a board is purple more often than not, and purple answers to sound and shape, not sense.

Treat one away as color information too. A one-away message on a plain-meaning group means one of your four is a decoy borrowed from another group. Swap the word whose meaning fits least tightly, not the one you like least.

Common questions

Are the colors shown before you solve a group?

No. Every word starts uncolored, and a group's color and category name are revealed only when you submit its four words correctly. Guessing a group's color in advance is part of the game, and this guide is about making that guess better.

Do I have to solve the groups in color order?

No. You can solve them in any order, and many players crack a wordplay group early because its four words stand out. The colors rate difficulty; they do not set a required order.

Is purple always wordplay?

Almost, but not always. In the 20 puzzles we counted, 19 purple groups were wordplay and one, THINGS THAT CAN BE SNAPPED on October 25, 2026, was a plain category. Plan for a trick, but do not force one when four leftover words share a plain meaning.

Can a puzzle have two groups of the same color?

No. Every puzzle has exactly one yellow, one green, one blue and one purple group. Once you have solved a group and seen its color, you know that color is finished, which quietly narrows what the remaining groups can be.