The New York Times just made it a little easier for gamers to show off their wordplay skills.
Connectionsthe New York Times’ popular word association game, is getting a new feature that lets players share their game stats with friends. Starting Tuesday, players will be able to look up their information and share data such as the number of puzzles a person has solved, a win percentage and a person’s winning streak with friends.
Connections is a word game where players look at a 4×4 line of words on a grid and try to find the hidden theme behind the word groups. Each group consists of four words and there are four groups in total. The game only gives you four chances to guess the correct grouping, so if you make more than four mistakes, you lose. It’s a daily puzzle, so the difficulty level can vary a lot depending on how obscure the solutions might be. The game now gives you a good insight into how good you are at it.
You can see what the new feature looks like below, but you can also share your score for the day, as well as other longer-term data like the number of puzzles someone solved and win percentage. According to Jonathan Knight, head of games at The New York Times, players can use these new features to “track, analyze and reflect on their play,” but if you ask me, I think it will just be a way for diehard fans to show off their wordplay skills.
I’ve seen a lot of extremely competitive TikTokers brag about how fast they can solve these puzzles, and now they have the data to back it up. Unfortunately, there’s still no timer, so if you’re the kind of person who gets a kick out of solving a word game really, really quickly, you’ll just have to find another way to share your talents.
