🧩 Connections Puzzle Maker

A Connections puzzle is a popular word game from The New York Times where players are presented with 16 words and must group them into 4 categories of 4 words each. Each category shares a common theme or connection. The 4 categories have different difficulty levels, indicated by colors: 🟡 Yellow (easiest), 🟢 Green (easy), 🔵 Blue (medium), and 🟣 Purple (hardest). Players have up to 4 mistakes before the game ends.

Simply fill in the 4 category cards on the left. Each card requires a category name (e.g., "Types of Fruit") and 4 related words. Select a difficulty color for each category using the colored dot buttons. The preview grid on the right shows your puzzle in real-time. Use Shuffle Preview to randomize word positions, and toggle Reveal Answers to see the color-coded solution. When you're done, click Copy Share Text to share your puzzle with friends!

The four colors represent escalating difficulty levels:
🟡 Yellow — The most straightforward and obvious connection. Great for warm-up categories.
🟢 Green — Still relatively easy but requires a bit more thought.
🔵 Blue — Moderately challenging; may involve less common knowledge or wordplay.
🟣 Purple — The trickiest category, often involving puns, idioms, word parts, or abstract connections. The purple category is what makes a Connections puzzle memorable!

A great Connections puzzle has:
✅ Clear internal logic — each category should have a well-defined theme.
✅ Red herrings — some words should plausibly fit into multiple categories, creating delightful "aha!" moments.
✅ Varied difficulty — spread categories across yellow, green, blue, and purple for a satisfying progression.
✅ Creative purple category — the hardest category should be clever, unexpected, or involve wordplay.
✅ No重复words — all 16 words should be unique (our tool checks for duplicates automatically).

Absolutely! Click the "Copy Share Text" button to generate a formatted text version of your puzzle. You can paste this into a message, email, or social media post. The share text includes all 16 words (shuffled), the category names with their difficulty colors, and the word groupings — perfect for challenging friends to solve your puzzle. You can also toggle "Reveal Answers" off before taking a screenshot of the preview grid to share as an image.

A standard Connections puzzle contains exactly 16 words, divided into 4 groups of 4. Each group corresponds to a single category. This format is consistent across all official NYT Connections puzzles and is the standard our tool follows. The 4×4 grid layout has become iconic and is optimized for both desktop and mobile play.

The purple category is often what players remember most! Here are some ideas:
🧠 Wordplay — words that can be combined with a common prefix/suffix (e.g., "___ dog" → Hot Dog, Dog Days, Dog Tag, Dog Ear).
🧠 Homophones — words that sound like something else when paired.
🧠 Obscure trivia — niche cultural references or specialized knowledge.
🧠 Meta-connections — the connection itself is about language or patterns (e.g., words that can precede "time").
The key is making it satisfyingly tricky but fair — solvers should think "of course!" once they see the answer.

There are no strict rules, but for the best experience:
• Keep words relatively short (ideally under 12 characters) so they fit neatly in the 4×4 grid.
• Use consistent formatting — all lowercase, all uppercase, or title case as you prefer.
• Avoid special characters that might give away connections.
• Make sure all 16 words are unique — our tool highlights duplicate words with a red border to help you catch them.
• Category names should be descriptive but concise — they'll appear in the legend when answers are revealed.