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The New York Times has engaged in some devious flim-flam for April Fools' Day this year via Connections, a small word game that's become a hit among the Wordle, Crossword and Spelling Bee crowd.
In Connections, players are given 16 words that they must correctly group into four groups of four, challenging players to identify what the words in the grid have in common. The game has proven to be a popular and, at times, frustrating challenge for puzzle-doers since it joined the Times' lineup of puzzles last year.
Today marks the first time Connections had the opportunity to do an April Fools' gag, and this is what it elected to do:
As one can see, the editor of today's Connections puzzle replaced words with emoji. This is a goofy little twist on the game's formula and has some clever solutions, but many players were decidedly not amused by the mild gag.
While interesting in theory, the issue with an emoji-based game of Connections that many players discovered is that there are multiple words each emoji could represent. Does the eye emoji literally mean "eye," or could it mean "see"? How many different words for "sheep" are there? What does the teapot mean? And so on.
There were some who appreciated the whimsy of the puzzle, and others who insisted that those complaining were weak of heart and mind.
It seems likely that the Times' experiment with the Connections formula is merely a one-off for April Fools' Day, so those upset about it will soon be able to resume their regular complaining about the Connections puzzle — like they did when the puzzle reminded everyone that "Breaking" is an Olympic sport.
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