Naruto Connections is a daily grouping puzzle in the spirit of the New York Times Connections game, built from sixteen Naruto character portraits instead of words. Hidden among them are four groups of four, and your job is to sort the whole board: Team 7 beside the Sand Siblings, the Sound Four beside the Seven Ninja Swordsmen, the Hokage beside the jinchūriki.

Every board is hand-built, and many are designed with traps. Naruto can be a member of Team 7, a jinchūriki and a Rasengan user all at once, and a puzzle is happy to put more than one of those groups on the table. Boards also depend on the era you choose: Part I puzzles stay in the original series, with Zabuza's crew, the Chūnin Exam proctors and the Sand's invasion of Konoha, while Shippuden puzzles bring in the Akatsuki duos, the Five Kage Summit and the Fourth Shinobi War.

Tap four portraits to select them and press Submit. If all four belong to the same group, they lock into a coloured row showing the group's name and a short description. Clear empties your selection, and Shuffle rearranges the remaining tiles.

You have five lives. Each submission that is not a complete group costs one life, and losing all five ends the game with the unsolved groups revealed. There is no 'one away' message, so a wrong guess tells you only that those four do not belong together.

Two hints are available per game. A hint reveals the name and description of one group you have not solved yet, but not its members. There is one board per day for each era, the same for everyone, and your result counts the lives you kept and the time you took.

Start with the most restrictive group. Obscure characters usually fit only one theme: if you spot a Chūnin Exam proctor, a member of the Twelve Guardian Ninja or a Hidden Rain shinobi, work out which group they must belong to and build outward from there.

Hold back the double agents. Characters like Naruto, Gaara, Jiraiya, Sasuke and Itachi fit several themes, so they are the easiest way to lose a life. Lock in the groups that do not need them first, and the right home for the flexible characters usually becomes obvious at the end.

Use your hints early rather than as a last resort. A group's description is worth far more when sixteen tiles are still in play than when only eight remain. If you keep seeing the same false group, press Shuffle: breaking up the visual clusters often reveals the real pattern.