Connections Answers — February 17, 2026

Every Connections puzzle sorts its 16 words into four groups of four, color-coded by difficulty: yellow is the easiest and most literal, green is a step trickier, blue is harder still, and purple is the most devious — usually built on wordplay, hidden words, or a twist you only see in hindsight.

The colors are a difficulty ranking, not a hint about content. Knowing the order matters because the puzzle is designed so the “obvious” grouping is often a decoy that steals a word from a harder category. Our full Connections tips guide breaks down each color tier in more depth.

The single biggest skill in Connections is resisting the first grouping you see. Setters deliberately include words that fit two categories — a word that looks yellow but actually belongs to purple. If you submit the easy-looking four, you often burn a mistake.

A better method: find the words that could belong to multiple groups and hold them aside. Build the group you’re most certain of from the words that fit nowhere else, and only then place the ambiguous words into whatever category still needs them.

Connections reuses a handful of category shapes. Spotting the shape tells you what kind of link to look for:

• “___ + word” or “word + ___” — four words that each precede or follow a common word (e.g. SUN, MOON, STAR, DAY all + LIGHT).
• Synonyms for one concept — four loose synonyms (ways to say “fast,” “angry,” etc.).
• Members of a set — types of a category (breeds, currencies, chess pieces).
• Hidden words / anagrams — words that contain a smaller word, or rearrange into something (the classic purple).
• Homophones or “sounds like” — words linked by sound, not meaning.

Purple is almost always wordplay rather than meaning. If three groups feel like “categories of things” and four words are left that seem unrelated, the link is probably structural — they each hide a body part, end in a silent letter, or are anagrams of planets.

A useful tactic: once you’ve confidently solved two groups, look at the eight remaining words specifically for a wordplay pattern rather than a topic. The purple connection is usually hiding in plain sight.

You get four mistakes before the game ends, so treat them as a budget. Lead with your highest-confidence group — ideally one where all four words fit nowhere else. Each correct group removes four words and shrinks the ambiguity for the rest.

If you’re torn between two groupings, submit the one whose four words you can’t imagine fitting any other category. Never spend a mistake on a guess you already suspect is a trap.

• Submitting the obvious yellow-looking four before checking which words the harder groups need.
• Ignoring purple until the end, then having no mistakes left to experiment with.
• Locking onto a theme too early and forcing a fourth word that doesn’t really fit.
• Forgetting that one word is usually a deliberate decoy shared between two groups.

A new Connections drops every day at midnight Eastern, and everyone gets the same 16 words — so the edge comes from method, not memorized answers. If you want to train that method, replay past puzzles in the Connections archive.