Connections

Sort a jumble of sixteen Pokémon into four hidden groups of four before your budget of mistakes runs dry.

How Connections works

The board hands you sixteen Pokémon and hides four connecting threads among them, each binding exactly four species. A group might be a shared type combo, a Pokédex color, a habitat, a common ability, an evolution stage, or a whole generation. You tap four tiles and submit; a correct set locks in with a color running from yellow for the easiest thread up to purple for the trickiest. You start with nine misses to spend, and every group you crack hands two of them back. Guess three of four right and the board warns that you are one away.

Strategy

Solve the purple thread last, not first. The obvious yellow and green links, color and generation, tempt you because they read at a glance, but their tiles often double as bait for a harder ability or type grouping. Park any Pokémon that seems to fit two threads at once and build the groups you feel certain of around it, so the ambiguous tile resolves itself once only one open slot remains.

What it teaches

Connections drills lateral classification: holding several attribute systems in mind together and noticing which one a Pokémon truly belongs to when it plausibly fits more than one at the same time.