Connections: Sports Edition

⚽ Sports nytimes.com/athletic/connections-sports-edition

🎯 What is Connections: Sports Edition?

Connections: Sports Edition is the daily sports-themed word-grouping game from the New York Times Athletic. Each day the puzzle drops a 4×4 grid of sixteen sports names — usually athletes, teams, coaches, or sporting events — and asks you to find four hidden groups of four that share something in common.

The categories can be anything from "players who wore number 23" to "teams that play in blue" to "QBs drafted in the same year." Difficulty scales across the four groups — one is easy, one is medium, one is tricky, and one is genuinely hard. The same answer goes out to every player at midnight local time.

💡 How to Play Connections: Sports Edition

Open nytimes.com/athletic/connections-sports-edition and look at today's 4×4 grid of sixteen sports names.
Look for the obvious group — usually a category that jumps out at a glance (a team, a uniform number, a draft class).
Click four names that you think belong together. Selected names highlight in your group's color.
Press Submit to lock in your guess. A correct group disappears from the grid; a wrong group counts as one of your four mistakes.
Watch the yellow one-away warning. If you submit a group that's just one name off from a real group, Connections lets you know.
Use the Shuffle button to reorder the grid if you've been staring at it too long. Sometimes a fresh layout makes a category click.
Solve all four groups without running out of mistakes. A new puzzle drops at midnight local time.