How Words, Links, and Chains Interact in Gameplay (and What You’ll Like)
Once you start playing one of the New York Times’ short word games, you can easily start playing the others. (Heck, I originally signed up for their app for the crossword puzzles. ) But maybe you’re playing one right now and eyeing the others with suspicion. So let’s break it down: What do each of these three popular games have to offer, and what does it take to excel at each?
Wordl
In Wordle, you guess one word and are given nothing at the start. You have to come up with your own starting word: I like ARISE, but everyone has their favorite . Green and yellow squares give you directions after each try. Green means you got the letter in the right place; yellow means there are letters somewhere in the word, but you got it wrong.
Time investment : Minimal. It usually takes me less than a minute, but a difficult word (or a few failed attempts) can leave me staring at it for a few minutes. Sometimes I put my phone down and come back to it later.
Skills Required : This game rewards those who spend a lot of time thinking about how words are formed. If you play a lot of other word games (and are a good speller), Wordle will be a lot of fun and you’ll probably do well. If you just guess words without thinking or strategy, the game won’t be as enjoyable.
Skills that will help you solve Wordle include:
-
Knowing which letters are most common in short words and how words are typically structured.
-
Understanding what words editors like to add. Simple plurals: no. Holiday-related thematic words: no. Rare or odd words: not common. Words with double letters or ending in “Y”: hell yeah, they love those.
-
Make strategic guesses (checking common letters rather than repeating information you already know).
Frustration Factor : Medium. The game is fairly simple, but there are some situations that can be tricky, and often it all comes down to luck. If you guess most of the word but there are many options to fill in the last few blanks (known as “-OUNDs”), you may run out of tries before you’ve tried all the words. Strategy can help , but sometimes you just don’t have enough tries to guess. That said, if you’re good at this game, you can almost always win. Personally, I’ve only lost four times in over 1,000 games.
There is an archive of past puzzles : Yes , for subscribers.
There’s a bot that can analyze your guesses and tell you how well you did : Yes , for subscribers.
Where to find our daily tips : Right here .
Connections
In Connections, you’re given sixteen words (or phrases, or names) and you have to sort them into four groups according to… well, depending on how the puzzle designer intended. Often, they’re synonyms for each other, or members of a certain category (like baseball teams). But some can be incredibly tricky (“unit homophones” – like CARROT, HURTS, JEWEL, OM).
Time taken : A few minutes. I timed myself and completed the easy puzzle in about a minute, the harder one in about five. Of course, the really hard ones may take longer.
Skills Needed : You don’t have to be a wordsmith to succeed at Connections, but it will help to have:
-
Know a lot of words – sometimes you come across unusual words.
-
Stay up to date with pop culture to know the names of bands, movie directors, or sports teams.
-
Be prepared to think outside the box, sometimes with some weird wordplay.
-
Recognize subtle spelling differences and similar details. Is GENIUS not GENUS, and why is GENUS on the list? (See above for the weird pun – it was on the “Spelling Bee Rankings Minus One Letter” list. GEN[I]US, GOO[D], [A]MAZING, S[O]LID)
Frustration Factor : High, as there are often obvious groupings that distract. GUITAR, NECK, and STRINGS seem to go together, but in today’s puzzle they were in different categories. There are also those weird wordplay categories I mentioned, names that sound like words in the dictionary and vice versa, and other unexpected groupings.
There is an archive of past puzzles : Yes , for subscribers.
There’s a bot that can analyze your guesses and tell you how well you did : Yes , for subscribers.
Where to find our daily tips : Right here .
Strands
Strands is a word search game with a fun mechanic. All the words have a common theme, and there’s a moment of insight that (ideally) will make you laugh and/or kick yourself. Plus, there are free hints if you get stuck.
Time spent : about two minutes for the easy version, five or more for the hard one.
Skills Needed : Hints make the game much easier. If you find three words that are real vocabulary words but not the words you need to find, you get a free hint. You can use the hint at any time, and it will circle the letters in one of the theme words, but you still have to put them in order.
However, you will succeed in Strands if you can do the following well:
-
Recognize words in which the letters are not in order.
-
Spell correctly (if you spell a word incorrectly when you look it up, it will be “wrong” even if the letters are right in front of you and you know what the word should be).
-
Find out how the theme, spangram, and words are related. Often there is a complex relationship, and understanding it makes the game much easier.
-
Have a good vocabulary, including knowledge of pop culture. Sometimes a word or phrase may be confusing.
Frustration Factor : Usually low. Sometimes you get a bunch of letters and you know you need to make a word, but you have no idea how to put them together. This is especially problematic if you just don’t know the word or phrase. In that case, there’s nothing you can do but move your finger in different directions until something works.
Is there an archive of past puzzles : No. (At least not yet!)
There is a bot that can analyze your guesses and tell you how well you did : No.
Where to find our daily tips : Right here .