Once you start playing one of the New York Times’ quick little word games, it’s easy to end up playing the others as well. (Heck, I originally subscribed to their app for the crosswords.) But maybe you’re currently playing one of the games, and eyeing up the others suspiciously. So let’s break it down: What do each of these three popular games have to offer, and what does it take to be good at each one?
Wordle
In Wordle, you guess one word, and you’re given nothing to go on at the start. You have to bring your own starter word: I like ARISE but everybody has their favorites. Green and yellow squares guide you after each guess. Green means you guessed a letter in the right place; yellow letters are in the word somewhere but you have the position wrong.
Time commitment: Minimal. Most days it takes me less than a minute, but a tricky word (or a few bad guesses) can mean I’m staring at the thing for several minutes. Sometimes I put my phone away and come back to it later.
Skills required: This game rewards people who have spent a lot of time thinking about how words are constructed. If you play a lot of other word games (and are a good speller), you’ll get a lot of enjoyment out of Wordle and will probably be good at it. If you just guess words without much thought or strategy, it’s not as rewarding.
Skills that will help you to solve Wordle include:
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Knowledge of which letters are most common in short words, and how words tend to be structured.
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A sense of what words the editors like to include. Simple plurals, no. Topical words on holidays, no. Rare or strange words, not usually. Words with double letters or ending in a “Y”: Heck yeah, they love those.
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Strategically making guesses (probing common letters, not repeating information you already know).
Frustration factor: Medium. The game is pretty straightforward, but there are some scenarios that can get tough, and they often depend on your luck in guessing. If you guess most of the word, but there are many options for what to fill in those last few blank spaces (infamously, “-OUND”), you may run out of guesses before you’ve tried all the words. Strategy can help but sometimes you just don’t have enough guesses to figure it out. That said, if you’re good at this game, you’ll almost always be able to win. Personally I’ve only lost four times in over 1,000 games.
Has an archive of past puzzles: Yes, for subscribers.
Has a bot that can analyze your guesses and tell you how well you did: Yes, for subscribers.
Where to find our daily hints: Right here.
Connections
In Connections, you’re given sixteen words (or phrases, or names) and you have to divide them into four groups according to … well, whatever the puzzle creator thought the groups should be. Often they are synonyms of each other, or members of a category (say, baseball teams). But some can be incredibly tricky (“homophones of units of measure”—that one was CARROT, HURTS, JEWEL, OM).
Time commitment: A few minutes. I timed myself and did an easier puzzle in about a minute, a tougher one in about five. The real head-scratchers may, of course, take a bit longer.
Skills required: You don’t need to be a word nerd to do well at Connections, but it helps to:
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Know a lot of vocabulary—sometimes there’s an unusual word.
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Be up on pop culture, so you can recognize names of bands or movie directors or sports teams.
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Be willing to think outside the box, for the occasional strange wordplay.
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Recognize subtle spelling differences, and similar details. GENIUS is not GENUS, and why would GENUS be on the list? (See above about strange wordplay—that one was in a list of “Spelling Bee ranks minus one letter.” GEN[I]US, GOO[D], [A]MAZING, S[O]LID)
Frustration factor: High, since there will often be apparent groups thrown in as red herrings. You’d think GUITAR, NECK, and STRINGS go together, but they each belonged to different categories in that day’s puzzle. There are also those strange wordplay categories I mentioned, names that look like dictionary words and vice versa, and other unexpected groupings.
Has an archive of past puzzles: Yes, for subscribers.
Has a bot that can analyze your guesses and tell you how well you did: Yes, for subscribers.
Where to find our daily hints: Right here.
Strands
Strands is a word search game with some cute mechanics. The words are all on a theme, and there’s an “aha” moment that will (ideally) make you chuckle and/or kick yourself, and there are free hints when you’re stuck.
Time commitment: About two minutes for an easy one, five or more if it’s tricky.
Skills required: The hints make this a much easier game than it would be otherwise. If you find three words that are real dictionary words, but aren’t the words you’re supposed to find, you get a free hint. You can use the hint anytime you want, and it will outline the letters in one of the theme words—but it’s still up to you to put the letters in order.
That said, you’ll be good at Strands if you can do these things well:
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Recognize words when their letters are out of order.
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Spell well (if you misspell a word as you’re finding it, it will be “wrong” even if the letters are right there in front of you and you know what word it should be).
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Figure out what the theme, spangram, and words have to do with each other. There’s often a tricky connection, and recognizing it makes the game a lot easier.
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Have a good vocabulary, including some pop culture knowledge. Sometimes a word or phrase is somewhat obscure.
Frustration factor: Low, usually. Sometimes you’ll end up with a clump of letters, know that they must make a word, but have no idea how to combine the letters. This is especially problematic if you simply don’t know the word or phrase. There’s nothing to do at that point but swipe your finger in random directions until something takes.
Has an archive of past puzzles: No. (At least, not yet!)
Has a bot that can analyze your guesses and tell you how well you did: No.
Where to find our daily hints: Right here.