Connections doesn't have the popularity of Wordle or barnstorming rise of Pips, but since launching in 2023, it's one of my favorite puzzles and a must-play for New York Times gamers.
As with every NYT game, some Connections are tricker than others — which is why we post Connections hints and answers every day. But which ones were the hardest Connections in 2025?
Connections 621 - February 21
Difficulty score: 4
Solve rate: 51%
This puzzle has a lot of words that could be associated with farms or orchards, making it tricky to decide which ones go where. Plus, if you've never used Photoshop, recognizing the tools can be difficult. Deciding if an object is left or right-handed is hard too, especially if it's not something you think about. I'm a lefty, for example, and I don't know that I've ever used a left-handed can opener, but I'm not surprised one exists.
Connections 640 - March 12
Difficulty score: 4
Solve rate: 49%
The yellow and green categories are fairly straight forward, ingredients or red things. But the blue and purple categories are much harder. Connections bot claims less than 50% of people ever found the blue set of non-rhyming words. Most people found the yellow and green sets.
There are a lot of colors too, which could be confusing.
Connections 624 - February 24
Difficulty score: 4
Solve rate: 49%
This puzzle features one of the trickier purple set types with a word hidden in another word. That alone can trip you up. Not having knowledge of naval tattoos can be hard as well. The problem is at first glance several words don't have an obvious connection.
Connections 655 - March 27
Difficulty score: 4.2
Solve rate: 34%
Like most Connections puzzles once you solve this set it seems obvious. But looking at the grid, it's easy to fall into some tricky category sets like combining scratch, chip, ding and touch as examples of minor damage. Or possibly sway, wave, move, and change as persuasion. You also have to know your slang.
Connections 635 - March 7
Difficulty score: 4.3
Solve rate: 67%
Despite a 4.3 difficulty rating, this puzzle actually has a fairly high 67% solve rate. Still, I can see the tricky bits with the biopics especially if you're not sure on the names. The purple category is especially hard with the second letter change. What makes this one solvable is that the purple set doesn't really fit with any of the other categories or even ones that you might put together.
Connections #632- March 4
Difficulty score: 4
Solve rate: 37%
The most difficult group in this set is the blue Dickens set. You might know Scrooge and Twist via cultural osmosis, but if you haven't read Bleak House or Great Expectations, you may be in the dark. That said, if you're able to find the other three, it may not matter as much. According to the Connections bot, the biggest mistakes were people looking for Dickens characters with Bucket commonly left out.
Connections 692 - May 3
Difficulty score: 4.3
Solve rate: 38%
Number 692 was one of the ones I missed this year. I even messed up the yellow when I put Fire, Lite, Ill, and Dope in. I recovered with lit but it foreshadowed my downfall. The 'add a letter to a word' purple set is my least favorite and the one I am most likely to struggle with and it clearly came through with the URL endings on this one.
Connections 625 - February 25
Difficulty score: 4.5
Solve rate: 67%
It's interesting that #625 is one of the hardest-rated puzzles of the year, but also has a solve rate of 67%. I believe some difficulty comes in whether or not you know what many means in other languages. Additionally, the blue and purple sets can be a bit vague.
Plus, you could combo pickle, relish, lime, and zest as a condiment of sorts. Gusto could possibly be swapped in for one of the many words.
As a reminder, if you find the yellow instead of submitting, you can shuffle the cards until it's out of your way to help you find other clues.
Connections 690 - May 1
Difficulty score: 4.5
Solve rate: 51%
Just over half of solvers were able to get this 4.5 rated puzzle. However, there are some mistakes. According to Connections bot 31% of players made a set of shake, break, bite and kick potentially as a fighting words set. A similar thing happened with camera movements where people combined shake, pan, zoom and tilt.
It seems people really struggled with the camera words. Dolly may be the outlier word for most people, especially if you're looking for other famous people or toy words.
Connections 660 - April 1
Difficulty score: 4.6
Solve rate: 29%
This April Fool's puzzle is the hardest-rated puzzle of 2025 and the solve rate of 29% reflects it.
When Connections gets truly tricky, it will eschew words for images or, in this case, symbols. Personally, as reflected in my solve above, the Emoticon mouths is the hardest set of the four. I never made that connection.
According to the Connection bot, the most common mistake was combining N, O, P and R. 51% of solvers made that mistake. 37% of solvers tried to put together X, ), (, and + presumably as a PEMDAS set.
Figuring out where the purple symbols went seems to be the most common error.
More from Tom's Guide
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.
