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by tzs 849 days ago
> A lot of people like NYT Connections a lot hate it

I was almost turned off of Connections by the poor instructions.

The instructions say that categories 'will always be more specific than "5-LETTER WORDS," "NAMES" or "VERBS"'.

Then one of the first puzzles I did had "PRONOUNS" as a category! That did not make a good first impression.

The interface also probably turns off some people who would otherwise enjoy it. It would be greatly improved if they replaced the "Shuffle" with letting you re-arrange the words by dragging them.
2 comments
GrinningFool 849 days ago
> hen one of the first puzzles I did had "PRONOUNS" as a category! That did not make a good first impression.

I think there's only about 120 or so pronouns, so having this as a category isn't as unreasonable as it first seems.

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gnicholas 849 days ago
Their conception of 'category' is ever-evolving. Recently it was "ingredients in minestrone", but of course that's just a random subset of "food". They also do things like "numbers minus a letter".

I still play Connections, and I do what was written up as "hard mode" in the NYT today: try to enter the matching quadruplets in reverser order, starting with purple.

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