8 Games Like NYT Connections for Word Puzzle Fans
June 25, 2026
Connections is the kind of puzzle that takes three minutes and uses up the next ten. You see sixteen words, you're confident about the easy group, and then the purple category reframes everything and you realize three of your answers were wrong. Hit Submit, share your color grid, and wait twenty-four hours to do it again.
If that loop is your thing but one puzzle a day isn't cutting it, here are eight games worth adding to the rotation.
What Makes Connections Stick
The specific satisfaction of Connections is controlled misdirection. Every board has at least one group designed to steal words from the categories where they obviously belong. "DIAMOND," "ROCK," "POP," and "JAZZ" are all music genres — until the board has a different category that claims three of them.
The shared daily puzzle adds a social layer. Everyone you know who plays started with the same sixteen words, and comparing strategies afterward is a separate game on top of the puzzle.
The alternatives below each hit part of that formula. Some give you more puzzles per day. Some raise the difficulty. One of them removes the daily limit entirely and lets you play on any topic you want.
8 Games to Play After Finishing Connections
1. Wordle
Wordle is the game that made daily word puzzles a social habit. Six guesses to find the hidden five-letter word, with color-coded feedback after each attempt: green for correct position, yellow for right letter wrong place, gray for not in the word at all.
If you play Connections, there's a good chance you already play Wordle. But if you haven't, start here — it's the game that defined the format, and it's still the cleanest version of the one-puzzle-a-day design. Free at nytimes.com, no download required.
2. Spelling Bee
Spelling Bee gives you seven letters in a honeycomb grid. Make as many words as you can using those letters, always including the center letter. There's no fixed finish line — you're chasing a point total, not a single answer — which makes it feel more like an endurance puzzle than a logic one.
The NYT runs a free daily set of letters. It's worth playing if you like vocabulary range over pure pattern recognition, and it pairs well with Connections as a morning warmup.
3. Strands
Strands is NYT's themed word search. You find hidden words in a grid — all connected by a single theme — plus a "spangram" that stretches from one side of the board to the other. The misdirection works similarly to Connections: words that look like obvious finds sometimes belong to a different pattern.
Strands and Connections are the two NYT games that reward the same kind of lateral thinking, which makes them the easiest to recommend together. Free daily at nytimes.com/games.
4. Quordle
Quordle is Wordle with four grids running simultaneously. You get nine guesses shared across all four boards — each guess applies to all of them at once. It's significantly harder than Wordle, and players who find Wordle too easy tend to stick with Quordle once they've started.
Free daily at quordle.com, plus a practice mode if you want extra rounds. The practice mode alone makes it useful when one puzzle a day isn't enough.
5. Stackdown
Stackdown is a word game that broke out in early 2026 and has been growing fast. The format puts a competitive twist on the daily puzzle rhythm, and it's caught on quickly with word game players looking for something new. Free to play, daily reset, shareable results — worth trying a round to see if the pacing clicks.
6. AI Crossword Maker
AI Crossword Maker works differently from every other game on this list. Instead of playing a pre-built puzzle, you generate one on any topic you want.
Type "90s sitcoms," "Greek mythology," or "Taylor Swift albums" into the app, and it builds a complete crossword — grid, AI-written clues, everything — in under a minute. There's no daily reset. No puzzle you've already seen. The clues are written specifically for the topic you chose, so the difficulty scales naturally with how well you know the subject.
It's free on iPhone with no account required. Download it once and you have a puzzle generator for any topic, any time.
7. Bracket City
Bracket City is one of the fastest-rising word games of 2026, built around a tournament-style format that distinguishes it from the standard daily-puzzle design. It's built a dedicated following quickly among players who want something more competitive than a solo solve. Free to play, worth adding to the rotation if you're drawn to the scoring and ranking side of word games.
8. Phrazle
Phrazle extends the Wordle format to full phrases instead of single words. Instead of guessing a five-letter word, you're guessing a common phrase — which makes it harder to brute-force and more dependent on recognizing patterns in everyday language.
If you like Connections' cultural knowledge element — the way "BAND," "ROCK," "POP," and "JAZZ" can all mean music genres or something else entirely — Phrazle rewards the same kind of lateral thinking, applied to phrases instead of categories. Free daily at phrazle.com.
The One for When You Want More Than One
Most games on this list give you one puzzle a day. That constraint is part of what makes them feel special, but it's also the main limitation.
AI Crossword Maker doesn't have a daily reset. Generate a crossword on "famous inventors" in the morning, send one about "the Office characters" to a friend at lunch, and run one on "80s movies" before bed. The app doesn't limit how many puzzles you generate, and every puzzle is different because every topic is different.
This makes it useful in a different way from the other games on this list. Less ritual, more toy. If someone in your group is obsessed with a specific topic, it's faster to generate a custom crossword than to find one that already covers exactly what you want. It also works as a standalone puzzle to share — screenshot it and text it, or print it for game night.
If you want to see more about what word puzzle games worth playing in 2026, check out the AI Crossword blog — we cover everything from NYT game alternatives to how to make a custom crossword on any topic.
For Wordle fans specifically, the 12 games like Wordle roundup covers more overlap territory with this list.
Which Game Fits Your Situation
For the daily ritual: Connections, Wordle, Strands, Spelling Bee — each resets daily, each takes under five minutes, each gives you something to compare with friends.
For more volume per day: Quordle, Stackdown, Bracket City, Phrazle — longer sessions or additional daily puzzles.
For unlimited puzzles on your topics: AI Crossword Maker — no reset, no cap, plays on whatever you're into right now.
The easiest starting point is whatever NYT game you haven't tried yet. After that, AI Crossword Maker is the right next step for anyone who wants the puzzle to fit them rather than the other way around. Free on iPhone, no account, no subscription — just type a topic and see what comes out.