Connections is a New York Times word game that's played with 16 words on a four-by-four grid; the objective is to correctly group four words into four sets, where the words in each set share some characteristic. Sometimes that's an easy thing to identify (colors), sometimes it's much tougher (dog breeds with first letter changed).
To play, you click on four words then click Submit to see if you got the grouping right. The way my brain works, though, I wanted to arrange the words visually first, as that makes it easier for me to process the relationships between the words. So I "created" (more on that below) a simple HTML/JS page to do just that:
Note that this is not a clone of the Connections game! It has absolutely no knowledge of the game, its rules, or which words belong where. It's not a game in any way, it's just a tool to help you rearrange words in a grid. I open it in a window next to the actual Connections puzzle, drag words around until I like what I see, then play the game for real in the other window.
About "my" creation
Almost all the code for this web app was created by Claude via a series of exchanges as I tested and changed things. If you're not a fan of AI-created stuff, don't use this helper. But on my own, there's no way I have the JavaScript skills necessary to write something like this, and I didn't want to spend months trying to learn and fight my way to a working tool. In total, this took me about two to three hours of real time from when I told Claude what I wanted to when I had a finished solution.
That's a difference maker for people like me, with ideas on what we want to do, and enough knowledge to get part of the way there, but not near enough knowledge to get all the way there.
How to use
The helper is just a web page with JavaScript, so it runs in your browser. Start by downloading the code (5KB). Unzip the file, move it somewhere where you can find it, then open the file in a new window in your browser. You'll be greeted by a page filled with text and instructions:
Follow those instructions, and you'll soon have a page of 16 word tiles:
Then just start rearranging. Once satisfied, complete the regular Connections puzzle.
New York Times subscribers
As noted in the instructions, if you subscribe to the Times (full subscription or games only), you can use the orange buttons and date input box up top to load any puzzle. Click Get Current to get today's puzzle, or enter a date and click Get Older to grab that puzzle from the archive. (This is actually the main reason I created this tool, as I was working through hundreds of old Connections games in the archive.)
In order for this to work, you must be logged into your NYT account in the same browser where you've loaded the helper.
Very cool, and yes this is exactly the kind of stuff that AI is making a huge difference with that most people are completely unaware of. FWIW It took a single request and less than 5 minutes for Claude to turn your code into a Chrome plugin which I found to be a bit more user friendly; particularly because then I don't have to deal with cross-site scripting issues.
I just use the Notes app...
I had a bunch of problems with getting the word list. Spent some time troubleshooting (with help of Claude - I, too, am Javascript challenged). Happy to discuss problems and fixes. But I'm also well aware that you did not sign up for supporting this little one-off web page.
My problems involved retrieving words and I was getting CORS and access control errors. I ended up just making an external call to the api, unauthenticated, which got me the word list?.
Anyway - thanks - I find this useful and I'm glad you put it out into the world.