JUMPING INTO A YEAR OF WORDS: CELEBRATING A LEAP WITH CONNECTIONS

From the day it first appeared, word games have been capturing the attention of millions of people, adding puzzling to the mix of linguistic rules and tidbits of knowledge, and Connections first put itself on the map of lexicon jocks exactly one year ago, this one, thanks to a leap year, and game 366! The New York Times is celebrating with special leaping puzzles to swish your brain with more diving and deep-diving stuff (if you’re into that sort of thing, which I am)! Grab your pencils and whips and get ready to leap!

THE LEAP INTO THE WORLD OF CONNECTIONS: A NEW CHALLENGE EVERY DAY

Connections is not just the name of an online word game. It is a labyrinth of linguistics, a daily test of your ability to find meaning inside a muddle. At the start of each day one gets a new puzzle, in which words are bundled into apparently bizarre categories. Your task, if you choose to accept it, is to jump from word to word, working out how they relate to each other, until you have prised open the puzzle of the day. Today, as we jump into game 366 (leap year anniversary and all that), the challenge is a little harder.

WHY LEAP INTO TODAY'S PUZZLE?

The game today, another step forward on the Connections timescale, poses a special challenge, with words that range from two letters to four, and each of them is the key that unlocks the puzzle. The mix in word length and possible prefixes is full of trapdoors that can snare you no matter how good a wordsmith you are. It is a leap worth taking.

MAKING THE LEAP: HINTS TO BRIDGE THE GAP

Attempting today’s challenge, you might feel stuck, the jumps elusive, the groups a jigsaw puzzle with pieces missing. And here’s where the leap fun begins, with more hidden cues – all wrapped with themes of colour – that is the essence of the game of Connections. From homophones testing aural dexterity to categories celebrating musical genres and the strength of millions of muscles, each clue a stepping-stone – every piece of a jigsaw puzzle comes together to complete this brain workout.

LEAP OF FAITH: TACKLING THE TOUGHEST CONNECTIONS

And this is one of the easier ones. Connections is rife with such puzzles. Categories as disparate as homophones and music genres spread across the plane, making it a multidimensional battlefield. To be successful at it you need to be flexible in your modes of thought. You have to leap into the unknown, where everything comes together in a different way. Part of the challenge is refusing to give up. It’s easy to fixate on an entry when it doesn’t quite want to give up its answer. But once you coax the connection out of your mind, the pressure is off. It becomes more enjoyable to plumb the fringes of language and culture, and see what turns up.

WHEN THE LEAP PAYS OFF: THE SATISFACTION OF SOLVING CONNECTIONS

Ultimately, the fun of Connections doesn’t simply come from the challenge, it comes from the delight you feel at solving these difficult puzzles, whether that takes you five-minutes or five hours. The result of this journey, reaching the end, is satisfying, not just as a confirmation of your hard work, but also in celebrating that leap into the dark, into a set of unknown words and obscure connections.

UNDERSTANDING THE LEAP: WHAT MAKES CONNECTIONS STAND OUT

At the heart of Connections is an invitation to gamers to take that cognitive leap across the multiple gulfs in each puzzle and to see the words not as individual items but as integral fragments – and to then fit them into a larger narrative. Not so much a linguistic aptitude test as an exercise in vision. How we see the world, how we connect dots to uncover a larger picture, is a daily celebration of language, stretching our hearts, minds and leaps.

So as we celebrate this leap year anniversary of Connections, we remember the strange and wonderful things that words do to us every day. We will have leapt with words again and again; we will have seen the amazing transformations they can make. We will also remember that we don’t need to choose only one of those leaps. There is a wild, uncontrollable, playful sense that we can only determine in the moment how many we will take. We hope that you will do the same. Let’s ever continue to leap – to leap into new puzzles, into new ridiculous contortions, into new juxtapositions, into new leaps. Let’s let the leaps begin.