Heidi Erwin

WHEN: 2023
WHAT: I led game design and built early prototypes for this daily puzzle game from The New York Times.
SKILLS: Game Design, Prototyping, Puzzle Content Creation, JavaScript, Figma

Work In Progress

This page has yet to be finished. Stay tuned!

Read more about Connections here.

Section of Wyna Liu's New York Times article describing the process of making Connections. It reads: How many cards should make up each category and board? Should we include a decoy that doesn’t belong to any category? Why does the player have to submit the last category? What about the colors and difficulty ratings? How do we visually present the information that tells players what to do? How is feedback given during gameplay? These are the kinds of questions I have always taken for granted working with crossword puzzles, where the conventions are already well established. One of the best parts of this process was working with other members of the Games team. I worked closely with Heidi Erwin, our brilliant digital puzzle designer, who patiently taught me about the myriad components that make up a game. While there’s a lot of overlap between what we consider a puzzle and a game, learning about their differences has been deeply helpful to my work on Connections.

Play Connections here.

Fun Stuff

I presented at The New York Times' annual State of the Times in 2024 to talk about the process behind Connections. I convinced my coworkers to dress up with me in Connections colors (because I love to be extra i.e. have fun). Here we are!

In order from left to right: Zoe Bell, Heidi Erwin, Wyna Liu, Joel Fagliano, and Robert Vinluan stand in the lobby of The New York Times building. Zoe is wearing black, Heidi yellow, Wyna green, Joel blue, and Robert purple, repping the colors of the NYT Connections game.

To celebrate the 100th day of Connections, I designed a puzzle for us to print on a cake and share with the team. Zoe Bell, the executive producer on Games, had the iconic idea to get spherical candles and spray-paint them grey to look like the "Mistakes Remaining" dots in Connections. "Four groups of four?" More like four groups of flour.

White rectangular cake featuring a Connections puzzle with the following words: HARD WORKER ZEN PEOPLE CLEAR DARK QUEEN CHECK SPELLING EDITOR REBUS MANIA CANDIDATE HONEY HUNT REVEAL.

Here's the solution.
Buttons in The Crossword: CHECK, CLEAR, REBUS, REVEAL.
Modes in NYT games: CANDIDATE, DARK, HARD, ZEN.
___ bee: HONEY, QUEEN, SPELLING, WORKER.
Puzzle ___: EDITOR, HUNT, MANIA, PEOPLE.

The last category has an internal reference. "Puzzle people" is the name of a Slack channel for Games. Puzzle Mania is The Times' annual variety puzzle that runs in print. Threw in that "DARK QUEEN CHECK" easter egg as a little Chess Replay shoutout :P

Thank you!

Connections is played by millions daily. I'm grateful to have been a part of bringing it to life.

Thank you to everyone who has played our game, and to the brilliant Wyna Liu for putting her brain and voice into this puzzle every day.