NYT Connections archive alternative: replay old boards in the Morgue

If you searched for an NYT Connections archive because you missed a few days, the free place to replay old Connections-style boards is TechTwitter IO's Morgue. It keeps every back issue of the paper, and each one still has its Connections puzzle on the last page, ready to play with no account.

For the New York Times' own past puzzles, go to NYT Games directly and see what your access includes. Its games menu links a crossword archive, and its Connections page offers a subscription for unlimited access. This article sticks to what you can play elsewhere.

What the Morgue is

TechTwitter IO is a satirical daily newspaper about tech Twitter. The Morgue is its archive: a list of past editions by date, grouped by month. Click any date and the whole paper for that day opens, from the front page down to Fun & Games.

That last section is the one that matters here. It holds a Connections board with sixteen tiles and the familiar "Find four groups of four" instruction, along with Submit, Shuffle and Deselect buttons and four dots counting mistakes left. The board in a back issue works the same way as the one in the latest paper.

How the answers are kept

Each edition prints the previous day's solutions in a box called "Yesterday's Answers", labelled "No peeking". So if you play an old board and want to check it, open the edition from the following day.

Why play back issues at all

Archives are useful for more than catching up. Playing several old boards in one sitting is the quickest way to learn how a puzzle setter thinks: which kinds of decoys they like, how often a category is a fill-in-the-blank, and how far a theme will stretch.

On TechTwitter IO the themes come partly from that week's tech Twitter. A recent answer key held amounts from a weekend of X Money posts, a group of AI agents and apps, settings to switch off on a smart TV, and, as a curveball, features of a castle. Playing a back issue a few days late also means you remember the stories behind the tiles, which makes the in-jokes land better.

Other puzzles in each back issue

A back issue carries the full puzzle page, so you also get that day's Twordle, Jumble, Who Tweeted It? and Real or Satire?. If you treat the Morgue as a puzzle archive, it covers all of them at once.

A reminder about the rest of the page: TechTwitter IO is satire. Its footer states that unless a post links to its source, the people, posts and quotes are parody or invented. The archive is a good place for puzzles and jokes, not a record of what actually happened.

When NYT Games is the better archive

If what you want is the New York Times' own boards, edited in the style you play every morning, nothing else replaces them. Check NYT Games for past puzzles. If you want a free stack of Connections-style boards to work through tonight, start with TechTwitter IO's Morgue and pick a date.