My first attempt at the Connections game didn’t start off well. There was a grid of 16 words and I had to choose sets of four that each followed a theme. I went for rain, heat, snow and sleet but was told that this was somehow wrong. Huh?

But a moment later, that "Huh?" was replaced by an "Aha!" Heat, along with the Jazz, Bucks and Nets, formed a set of NBA teams. Hail was the right partner for the words about the wet weather. Racecar, which seemed like an outlier – there were no other vehicles – turned out to be part of a set of palindromes.

Here’s how to play the new New York Times puzzle game. Each of the four sets of words is color-coded based on their difficulty, and you’re allowed four “mistakes” (like my first guess) before you officially lose. I made the one mistake the first time, and solved the next day’s puzzle perfectly.

The New York Times has just released this brand new game from "beta" mode and is now available in the NYT Crossword app and on the newspaper's Games page. A new numbered puzzle is available every day, as are the daily Wordles.