NYT ‘Connections’ November 15: Answers and Clues for Game #523

Friday is finally here and so is another Connections puzzle to solve—and Newsweek has provided all of the help you need.

Launched by The New York Times in June 2023, Connections is the news outlet’s second most-played game after the hugely popular brainteaser Wordle.

According to the publication, Friday’s game difficulty is 3 out of 5, with the website explaining: “The difficulty of each puzzle is determined by averaging the ratings provided by a panel of testers who are paid to solve each puzzle in advance to help us catch bugs, inconsistencies and other issues. A higher rating means the puzzle is more difficult.”

Keep scrolling for tips on today’s Connections but be warned, the answers to the puzzle will be revealed at the bottom of the page. If you would rather avoid spoilers, we advise you to move down the page with caution.

How to Play ‘Connections’

Players are given a table of 16 words. These are split into four groups of four based on common characteristics and placed into categories. The categories vary in difficulty from yellow to green to blue to purple, with yellow considered the easiest category and purple considered the trickiest.

Once you’ve selected four words that you think belong together, click the “Submit” button. If your choices are correct, they’ll appear in the category color and disappear from the grid. However if they are incorrect, they will remain gray in color and stay on the board.

The familiarity of the words used and how often they pop up in modern life are also difficulty factors, although less-common words aren’t used only in the harder categories. “Item overlap,” where one word can be linked to multiple categories, is another way Connections tests players.

The puzzles often incorporate homophones, wordplay, and other clever twists, ensuring they’re rarely straightforward. If stuck, players can hit the shuffle button, which will mix up where the words appear on the screen.