If you’re looking for a solid April 10/10 joke, I recommend playing The New York Times Connections puzzle today?
Connections is a word association game where players start with a grid of 16 words. In this daily puzzle, players will find the common thread between four words and discover four different groups of words, each with its own unifying theme. Easy to learn, hard to parse, this particular game has it built a reputation online because they are difficult and sometimes have somewhat obtuse solutions. Then on Monday the editors took the word game in a surprising direction by replacing the usual series of works with emojis.
It’s a playful and visual twist on a beloved game. Some online made a hype out of it as the “CRAZIEST CONNECTIONS EVER,” but not everyone is excited about the antics. Players quickly took to social media platforms like X to share their criticism of the move. A user on X wrote, “what the nyt did with connections before April 1 is evil and possibly deserves jail time.” While some of the comments seemed a bit…aggressive…at least it seems to have been done in a gesture of puzzling fun. Another person wrote on X, “nyt-connections-editor I’m in your walls.” So if you have a Connections editor, an exorcism may be to protect yourself from all bad vibrations.
Polygon contacted a representative from The New York Times to ask about the special puzzle. When asked what inspired the unique twist, New York Times Games editor-in-chief Everdeen Mason said the team encourages puzzle makers to get creative with the game.
“Connections, like all New York Times Games, are human-made and we encourage the puzzle builders and editors to make creative choices.” Mason wrote in an email: “This makes our puzzles more fun and prevents monotony. We test every puzzle before publication and take solver feedback into account as we experiment with new puzzle formats and styles. We’re always happy to see our community of solvers having fun, even if they find our puzzles… well, puzzling.”
Personally, I think it’s a refreshing take on a game I already enjoy. It still uses the same kind of logic and it has scratched my daily logic puzzle itch. This time I got to play by clicking on all the cute emojis.