Demon Slayer Connections brings the grouping puzzle made famous by the New York Times to the world of Kimetsu no Yaiba. Sixteen character portraits fill the board and they hide four groups of four. Some groups are straightforward, like a household or a set of Upper Moons, but others hinge on subtler links such as the arc where a character first appeared or a shared breathing style.

It is a daily puzzle: the board is picked from the UTC date, so every player solves the same sixteen characters in the same starting layout, and the puzzles are hand-built with deliberate traps. A character can look like they fit two groups at once, and working out which one they really belong to is the heart of the game.

Tap four characters you think share a connection, then press Submit. If all four belong to the same hidden group, they lock together at the top of the board with the group's label, such as the family or arc that links them. If even one of them is wrong, you lose a life.

You have five lives and two hints. A hint names one of the unsolved categories without telling you which characters are in it, so you still have to find the four yourself. The Shuffle button rearranges the remaining tiles, which often helps you see a pattern you had been reading past, and Clear empties your current selection.

Find all four groups to win, or lose all five lives and the full solution is revealed. You get one puzzle a day, it changes at midnight UTC, and signed-in players who finish are placed on the daily leaderboard, which rewards solving with fewer mistakes.

Before you tap anything, look for characters who could belong to more than one group. If you see five or six Hashira on the board, not all of them are in the Hashira group, and the extras are almost certainly part of a debut-arc or family category. The obvious group is often the trap.

Think in the categories the game uses: family, rank, species, status, affiliation and the arc where a character debuted. Arc groups catch many players out because they mix heroes and villains: a Hashira, a demon and a background slayer can all share the arc of their first appearance. Status matters too, since some groups are about who has died.

Solve the group you are most certain of first, even if it seems too easy, because every locked group removes four tiles and makes the remaining overlaps clearer. Save your hints for the last two groups, where a single category name usually settles the whole board.