Rachael Albert, Senior, Assistant Editor
The New York Times. Everyone knows them, most people love them, and the biggest part of their audience comes for the games. In 2022, the Times had a monthly audience of 145 million people, but the games alone surpassed this number by over 2,700%. The main reason for this is that you don’t need to pay to access many of NYT games. While you need a subscription to do the crossword and the Spelling Bee, the Wordle, the Mini Crossword, and, more recently, the Connections are all free to play for anyone in the world.
Wordle became popular in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, when people found joy in exercising their brains for a few minutes every day and sharing their results with friends and family. With the Times’ newest addition of Connections, we see a similar phenomenon. But when did the craze start? Why are people, young and old, so drawn to it? My peers at Marblehead High School were happy to talk with me about the subject, and much of what they said had the same consensus: it’s a fun challenge, a good way to exercise your brain, and it’s a way to pass time in a boring class.
If you haven’t heard about Connections through your neighbors, family, or friends griping because they couldn’t solve the puzzle that day, let me explain. You are given 16 words, and your job is to create groups of four based on what certain words have in common. You aren’t given the categories, which is the challenge. It’s up to you to figure out whether “oui” acts as a homophone for “wii,” ”we,“ and ”wee,“ or if you should group it with the words for “yes” in Spanish, English, and Japanese.
The game was released on July 12, 2023, and quickly captured everyone’s attention. The first I heard of it was from an English teacher at MHS, and after a rocky first few days of figuring out how the game worked, I was hooked, and my peers felt similarly. Many jumped on the Connections bandwagon because they also do the Mini Crossword and the Wordle, and they find that it is an easily accessible game to play on your phone or computer. Most report doing the Connections either all or most days, and usually complete it during school. While a few people said they do the Connections either in the morning or right before bed, the majority find time to do it during lunch or an uneventful class at school. We may see this and worry that students are missing important instructional time, but I find it reassuring that when kids are feeling under stimulated in school, they are finding fun ways to exercise their brains on their own. The Connections is a game that takes only a few minutes out of their days and gives them a sense of accomplishment when they can complete the puzzle, especially without losing any guesses.
High schoolers also feel that the Connections has become most popular with young adults, but also draws in older generations. The New York Times has found a market, and, as one teen stated, “Old people and young adults love puzzle games for some reason.” Though, the relationship that people have with the NYT Games is sometimes a love-hate one. It is natural for people to get frustrated when they can’t solve their daily puzzles, but the categories of the Connections can be too subjective, some people say. For example, the category “things that are fun,” came up in a recent game, which can have many different answers depending on what kind of person you are.
The categories also cover such a wide range that sometimes they can be rather obscure for many people. Not everyone knows that “OK“ is a magazine, or that ”rot“ is used to describe something nonsensical. Yet, everyone accepts that this is a part of the game and what makes it a challenge, because nothing is fun if you can get it every single time. You have a right to get upset, but remember that at the end of the day, it’s all just fun and games.