It's official! Connections, the latest New York Times puzzle game to rock the internet, is now available on the New York Times Games app for iOS and Android devices after it was released on desktop earlier this year.
In Connections, players get the chance to find four groups of four items that share something in common. Once they think they’ve figured it out, they can click “submit” to see if their guess is correct. But be careful — you only have four chances to solve the puzzle before it’s all over.
After Connections beta launched in June, fans took to Twitter to share their thoughts about the fun new activity.
“I really like this game,” one person wrote on Twitter.
Another said, “I’m thinking this new game is a good one…”
A third added, “Love this!”
The New York Times’ associate puzzle editor Wyna Liu has been credited for helping to create the game. But when she shared a link to it on Twitter, Victoria Coren-Mitchell, host of the popular British game show “Only Connect,” said Connections has a lot of similarities to her game show.
“Do you know this has been a TV show in the UK since 2008 ?!” Coren-Mitchell tweeted to Liu. “It’s so similar I guess you must do?”
In “Only Connect,” a group of three people are tasked to figure out what four group of words have a connection before time runs out. Much like Connections, one word can have multiple meanings and it’s up to the contestants to figure the puzzle out.
Although Liu has yet to publicly respond to Coren-Mitchell’s claim, she did explain in detail how she came up with the game in an article she wrote for The New York Times.
Liu said she was inspired by the work of cartoonist Robert Leighton, who would use drawings as puzzles.
“With the help of an answer key, I learned from his puzzles that a drawing of a tick, a thumbtack and a tow truck could be used to express the term ‘tic-tac-toe,’” she said.
“Thinking about these puzzles reminded me of how meaning can be communicated succinctly, and I was inspired by their playfulness and use of free association,” Liu added.
After jotting down her ideas in a notebook, Liu realized that she could create “a mix of categories for the game to feel challenging and satisfying.”
“That’s where the puzzle element could come in: Some categories might be defined by their use of wordplay — palindromes, homophones, adding or dropping letters and words — rather than the literal meanings of the words on the cards,” she said.