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According to Everdeen Mason, the editorial director of the Times’s Games section, these theories about Connections suddenly “getting harder” based on social media discourse are both hilarious and wrong — mostly. “We see everything, and we think pretty much all of it is funny,” she says of the people livestreaming their games and teasing each other over their results. “Connections in particular has felt really special, in part because of TikTok. I don’t know that any of our other games have really taken off in the same way. The game itself is pretty witty, and people can feel that and want to riff on it. It just makes it really memeable.”

The idea that the Connections editor, Wyna Liu, changes the difficulty in response to social chatter is untrue — games are programmed about a month in advance — with the exception of one period last October, before the Connections team started using official testers. Testers, who are paid and selected by Games staff, are used for all Times games to help look out for potentially incorrect or offensive puzzles, or grids where there could be multiple correct solves. “There were a couple of weeks where the solve rates were really low, and we were like, ‘We need to do something about this.’”

“It’s pretty much always the purple category that people are crankiest about,” Mason says. She points to the bird category and another purple set in February made of words beginning with instruments (“bassinet,” “cellophane,” “harpoon,” “organism”) as particularly frustrating for solvers. Of course, the frustration is part of the fun, and it’s why Connections was an immediate hit from its 90-day beta release last summer. Its full release, however, caused a small controversy because of its similarities to the British quiz show Only Connect, which also asks contestants to group a grid of 16 words into four sets of four. The game’s host, Victoria Coren, responded to the launch of Connections on Twitter, asking, “Do you know this has been a TV show in the UK since 2008?! It’s so similar I guess you must do?” The Times has denied copying the format.

Connections is also, crucially, much easier to solve than Only Connect’s grids, and audiences got obsessed quickly. It’s a similar story to Wordle, which debuted in 2021 and went viral in 2022, its characteristic colored block emojis making for the perfect shareable signature. More than that, Wordle avoids a common problem with games — playing too much too quickly and burning out — by only releasing a single game per day, which is also the model Connections and Spelling Bee use. None of these games has the power to take over your whole life in the way that, say, a super engrossing new video game might. And even though you’re technically only in competition with yourself, they’re fundamentally social games: Grids and scores are easily shareable online and make for solid conversation starters with pretty much anyone.

Liu has responded to the conversations on TikTok by posting her tips on how to play. Most importantly, she says, don’t guess unless you’re pretty sure you have a category. Second, look for words that don’t belong anywhere else. Last, think flexibly — “my job here is to trick you,” she says.

Games have been a hugely successful bet for the Times. The company told Axios that its puzzles, which were played more than 8 billion times in 2023 (including 2.3 billion Connections successes), have contributed to subscriber growth in a tough media market. Up next: a word search called Strands that’s currently in beta mode. Judging from the discourse it’s already sparked online, it seems to be yet another puzzle for solvers to argue about in comments sections and Reddit threads. In other words, a hit.

Though the New York Times debuted and then shuttered the math game Digits last year, something about word games seems to stick. “It’s our main medium of communication,” Mason says. “They make people feel engaged and intelligent, but they’re also accessible. You can take something away: a new vocab word, a new perspective, new connections between things.” Personally, I’ll never look at the word “kisscam” in the same way again.

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