connections-tui 0.1.0rc3

Play NYT Connections in the Terminal using rich for wide terminal compatibility.

NYT Connections in the Terminal

A lightweight, dependency-free TUI for playing the NYT Connections game in your terminal. It fetches the official daily puzzle and lets you play with a simple, clean interface using Python's built-in curses library.

Preview

Here's a glimpse of what it looks like in action:

$ connections-tui -d 2024-08-23
              NYT Connections — 2024-08-23
                     Strikes: ❤❤❤❤❤

Solved groups: (none yet)

  [ BUFF ]          [ CREAM ]         [ FINISH ]        [ FAWN ]
  [ TAN ]           [ MONITOR ]       [ GLOVES ]        [ BOA ]
  [ CHECK ]         [ TERMINAL ]      [ TIE ]           [ FAN ]
  [ SCREEN ]        [ CORSET ]        [ DISPLAY ]       [ BASK ]

Use arrows/WASD to navigate, [Space]=Select, [Enter]=Submit, f=shuffle, c=clear, q=quit

Features

• Play the official NYT Connections puzzle for any day.
• No external dependencies, just Python 3.8+.
• Smooth keyboard navigation (Arrow keys or WASD).
• Shuffle, select, and submit words.
• Strike tracking with hearts (❤) or ASCII (O/x) for compatibility.
• "One away" hints when you're close.
• After solving, you can immediately load the next or previous day's puzzle.
• Load puzzles from local JSON files for offline play or custom games.
• Set a random seed for reproducible shuffles.

Installation and Usage

Arguably the simplest way to run the project is with uv:

uvx connections-tui@latest

You can of course install directly from PyPI:

pip install -U connections-tui

and run the console command in your terminal:

connections-tui

Command-line Options

You can customize the game with these arguments:

Argument	Shorthand	Description
--date <YYYY-MM-DD>	-d	Play the puzzle for a specific date. (Default: today)
--file <path/to/file.json>	-f	Play from a local JSON puzzle file.
--seed <integer>	-s	Set the random seed for reproducible board shuffles.
--ascii	-a	Use ASCII characters (O/x) for strikes instead of hearts.

Example:

# Play yesterday's puzzle with ASCII hearts
connections-tui -d $(date -v-1d +%Y-%m-%d) --ascii

Keybindings

Key	Action
Arrow Keys, WASD, HJKL	Move cursor
Space	Select/deselect a word (up to 4)
Enter	Submit your selection of 4 words
f	Shuffle the remaining words on the board
c	Clear your current selection
q	Quit the game
n	(After solving) Load the next day's puzzle
p	(After solving) Load the previous day's puzzle

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for details.