NYT Connections #1,046 is live Wednesday, April 22, 2026, bringing another round of the daily word game that opens at midnight local time on website and Games app. Players get a grid of 16 words, phrases, symbols or numbers and must sort them into four groups of four without seeing the categories first.
The appeal is in the narrow margin for error. There is only one correct solution, players can guess wrong three times, and a fourth mistake ends the game. The groups are color coded in a yellow, blue, green and purple order, with yellow usually the easiest to spot, while purple often leans on wordplay and blue frequently draws on cultural references. Yellow and green groups often turn on synonyms, which is why so many players spend their first minutes testing combinations before committing to a board.
That structure is what keeps the game moving from one day to the next. Connections is free to play for anyone on the Times site or app, while subscribers with an NYT All Access or Games plan can open the archive and work through every previous puzzle. The game also tracks player progress, and many fans care as much about preserving long win streaks as they do about solving a single board.
Players can share results with an emoji-based grid, a small ritual that has helped the game become part scorecard and part social signal. A reverse rainbow, the game’s cleanest brag, means correctly identifying purple, blue, green and yellow in that order with no mistakes. This edition’s hints-and-answers format does not include the puzzle words themselves in the text provided, but it gives newcomers the basic framework they need before they enter today’s board.
