Sports Connections

Building on the popularity of Connections, NYT’s sports journalism publication, The Athletic, now releases Connections: Sports Edition puzzles every day. Officially released on February 9, 2025, this is a sports-themed version of the popular word association game from The New York Times. It features the same game mechanics, rules, and 4 x 4 grid as its parent, NYT Connections. Popularly referred to as Sports Connections, this game is a quick and fun brain-teaser that tests the strength of your sports vocabulary.

What Is Connections: Sports Edition?

Connections: Sports Edition is released by The Athletic in partnership with The New York Times Games. Featuring a sports theme, this puzzle requires wide-scale solution tactics, ranging from group selection to pattern detection, making it another popular word game after Connections and Wordle.

In the Sports Connections game, players will come across a 4×4 board of 16 words, classified in four categories based on difficulty. These difficulty-based categories are classified as four color sets, including Yellow (easiest), Green, Blue, and Purple (hardest).

However, for crossword lovers who are yet to have a detailed understanding of how to play Sports Connections, you can follow our guide to learn all about its gameplay. Trust me, if you are a sports fan, you are going to have a lot of fun once you figure out how to solve the puzzle.

Connections Sports Edition: Game Rules Explained

The basic rules of Sports Connections are similar to its paternal game, NYT Connections. The only difference that has already been disclosed is its sports theme and related vocabulary. 

Check out the basic rules of Connections: Sports Connection below:

• A 16-word puzzle dashboard in a 4×4 grid view
• It is solved correctly in a set/series accompanied by 4 relevant words indicating a particular meaning, called Group.
• Each Group covers a diverse spectrum of sports niches such as stadium snacks, sports drinks, team names, game positions, etc.
• The game is color-coded and adopts an ascending order difficulty level from easy to hard.
• While playing, the player can endlessly shuffle the grid before submitting a Group.

Things to keep in mind while playing NYT Sports Connections

• Each player has four attempts to complete the puzzle.
• The player wins the game by correctly identifying four related words in four groups.
• If the player makes four mistakes, the game ends in a loss, and the answers are automatically revealed.

How to Play NYT Connections Sports Edition?

While the crux of the NYT Sports Connections has already been made clear in a nutshell, for better understanding, follow the following graphical steps. 

1. Visit the Connections Sports Edition official page on The Athletic.
2. Click on ‘Play’ on the dashboard to view the 4 x 4 grid. You can shuffle the grid and deselect the words as many times as you want.
3. Now, click and select four related words to make the group. Hint: Try to figure out a niche and accordingly start picking the words under that niche.

4. After selecting the four words, press the Submit button to check whether you’ve guessed the answer correctly. If the words are related, the game confirms the same, groups the words, and assigns the relevant group color, i.e, yellow, green, blue, or purple.
5. If your word grouping is incorrect, then you will see an error and lose one of your chances (you have four chances).
6. Repeat this process until you have figured out all four categories of four words.
7. On successful completion, you will be greeted with a scoreboard with average time taken to complete.

Things to Keep in Mind While Playing Sports Connections

The hints for the Sports Connections game can be identified with pattern recognition. If you’re able to understand the pattern and how the words relate to each other, the rest of the game will be pretty simplified.

To help you out, check out some simple tips and tricks to solve the puzzle without requiring NYT Sports Connections hints:

• Look for a one-two: Just like a quick two-player passing combination can break down a defense, start by spotting two words with a clear connection. Use that pairing as a building block to uncover the easier categories and narrow down the rest of the puzzle.
• Rearrange the board to find new angles: Shuffling the grid is like resetting the play. A new layout can make patterns jump out that weren’t obvious before, especially when categories are closely related.
• Watch your mistakes like penalties: You only get a limited number of wrong guesses, so use each attempt wisely. If a grouping doesn’t work, take note of what’s left – the remaining words often reveal the theme you overlooked.

That is all you need to know about NYT Connections: Sports Edition. Hope you’ve got an overview of the game and associated tactics to ace it out of the park. While it is fair that you need to go hands-on with a couple of games to become a pro, things will be pretty smooth-sailing if you are already a crossword lover.