How to play Anime Connections
Anime Connections is a free daily anime puzzle, played like NYT Connections. Sixteen names from anime hide four groups of four: find what links them before you make four mistakes. There is a new puzzle every day, and every past one is in the archive.
- The board holds sixteen items from anime: characters, shows, techniques, places and words.
- They make four groups of four, and each group shares one specific thing: a team, a trait, a pattern in the names.
- Select four you think belong together and submit. Get it right and the group locks in. Get it wrong and it costs you one of four mistakes.
- Some items look like they belong in more than one group. Only one way of sorting all sixteen works.
- Groups run from yellow, the most straightforward, through green and blue to purple, the trickiest and usually wordplay.
Tips
- When five items seem to fit one group, one of them only looks the part. Find where it really belongs.
- Read names letter by letter. The purple group is usually wordplay, not trivia.
- Lock in the group you are surest of first. Every group you find leaves fewer places for the rest to hide.
Questions
- When does a new puzzle come out?
- At midnight where you are. Everybody plays the same puzzle on the same date.
- Do I need to have watched every show?
- No. The groups lean on the anime most fans have seen, and when one group is outside what you know, you can usually find it by solving the others around it.
- What counts as a mistake?
- Any four that are not a group. Three of the four right tells you that you are one away, and it still counts. Submitting a guess you already made costs nothing.
- Is Anime Connections like NYT Connections?
- It plays the same way: sixteen items, four groups of four, four mistakes and one puzzle a day. Every item comes from anime, and it has nothing to do with The New York Times.
- Can I play past puzzles?
- Yes. Every puzzle so far is in the archive, free, and each one has its answers folded away under the board.
- Can an item fit two groups?
- No. Every puzzle is checked so each item belongs to exactly one group. Some are there to look like they fit somewhere else.
- Where can I play Anime Connections?
- Right here, in any browser on a phone or a computer. A new puzzle comes out at midnight every day, and every past puzzle is in the archive.
- Is Anime Connections free?
- Yes. No app, no account, no sign-up.