Best games like Connections

The recent craze that revived word-related puzzle games and brain teasers all started with Wordle. We’re all still hooked on that game, but The New York Times saw the potential to give us new ways to flex our brains with other games like Connections. The concept is simple, but the actual puzzles are incredibly devious. Still, there’s something so addicting about cracking the code and solving these logic puzzles (even if you need a little help). But if you’re a total whiz at them and are looking for more ways to boost your brain, there are plenty more options out there besides what’s on the NYT website. Here are some amazing alternatives to Connections you should try your hand at.

Best games like Connections

Dabble: A Fast Paced Word Game

A bit like Scrabble, Dabble tests your ability to make words using a set of predetermined letters. However, you can’t just make whatever words you want. Each game starts you with 20 letters that you need to sort to make one two-letter word, one three-letter word, one four-letter word, one five-letter word, and one six-letter word using each letter once. Oh, and you only have five minutes to sort it out. This makes it far more challenging than a game like Scrabble where you are free to make any word you want since creating the wrong word once will prevent you from solving the entire puzzle.

Red Herring

Platforms

Android, iOS

Genre

Puzzle

Publisher

Blue Ox Family Games, Inc.

Release

March 01, 2014

We don’t know for sure, but Connections could very well have been inspired by Red Herring. This game plays almost exactly like Connections, as you need to sort words into categories, but there are a few Red Herrings in every game to throw you off track. Sounds pretty familiar, right? The game comes with 25 built-in levels, but also a daily puzzle to keep you coming back. There’s no time limit, but it does come with three difficulty levels so you can ramp up or down depending on your skill level. There’s almost no way you won’t like Red Herring if you enjoy Connections.

Semantle

Platforms

Web browser

Genre

Puzzle

Release

January 30, 2022

Semantle is a game about uncovering one hidden word that plays hot and cold with words you guess. The closer the word is semantically is to the hidden word, the warmer the game will tell you that you are. That means you’re not just guessing random words based on revealing letters, but trying to home in on a word based on what it means. This is way harder than it sounds and will test your vocabulary in ways no other NYT game does. Just like Wordle and Connections, you can share your scores and challenge friends and family members to beat your score and see who can find the word first every day.

KeyWords

Genre

Strategy

NYT isn’t the only online publication that offers puzzle games. The Washington Post wants to get in on the action, too, and Keyword is probably its best offering. The setup here is that you’re presented with six words, but each one has a letter missing. Not only do you need to find out what that missing letter is for each word, but you also need to create a new word from those missing letters to solve the puzzle. Just like Connections, this offers you a bit of leeway in solving the puzzle since you can move on to other words if you’re stuck on one and get enough hints to determine that tricky letter later.

Quordle

Platforms

Web browser

Genre

Puzzle, Quiz/Trivia

Release

January 30, 2022

Clearly, the name Quordle is meant to evoke feelings of Wordle. But this is a word-guessing game where you only have nine total guesses to reveal four words at the same time. This means you not only have to guess words with a variety of letters to start, but it forces you to get much more deliberate with each subsequent guess since you need to create words that contain letters you think will reveal more of all the words instead of just a single one.

Finally we have Squareword, a mix of Wordle, Crosswords, and a dash of Connections. The ultimate goal is to guess all the five-letter words in the grid before you run out of guesses. Every word you guess horizontally reveals all the correct letters for the words in the rows below in a similar way to Wordle, but you can also use the letters vertically to figure out the words horizontally, and vice versa. It sounds complicated, but one game is all it takes for it to click and become a fierce but addictive challenge.