A game designed for people who already spend time thinking about sports
Each morning, a small ritual unfolds for sports fans who open the New York Times: sixteen words arranged on a screen, waiting to be sorted into meaning. Connections: Sports Edition, born from the Times' acquisition of The Athletic, asks players not merely to think, but to remember — umpire calls, soccer positions, baseball dynasties, and the hidden grammar of phrases. It is, in its quiet way, a daily test of whether the knowledge we carry about the games we love still lives somewhere useful inside us.
- Puzzle #571 demands fluency across baseball, soccer, and MLB family history simultaneously — a challenge that separates casual fans from devoted ones.
- Four mistakes and the game ends, creating a tension that turns each guess into a small act of commitment.
- Players can shuffle the board to coax hidden patterns into view, a tactical reprieve in a game that otherwise rewards pure recall.
- Today's hardest category — phrases ending in RANGE — requires lateral thinking that has nothing to do with sports at all, catching even knowledgeable players off guard.
- Correct answers vanish from the board, narrowing the field and building momentum toward resolution with each successful grouping.
- Shareable results on social media transform a solitary puzzle into a daily communal ritual, binding the sports audience to the Times one morning at a time.
The New York Times has carried its daily puzzle habit into sports territory with Connections: Sports Edition, developed alongside The Athletic — the sports journalism outlet the Times acquired in 2022. Where the original Connections draws on general knowledge, this version assumes you already live inside the world of sports, testing not curiosity but accumulated devotion.
The format is familiar: sixteen words, four hidden groups of four, a color-coded difficulty scale running from yellow through green, blue, and finally purple. Players have four mistakes before the game closes on them. A shuffle button lets them rearrange the board when the patterns refuse to surface on their own.
Today's puzzle, number 571, moves across three distinct sporting worlds. Baseball umpire calls — BALL, OUT, SAFE, STRIKE — form the easiest entry. Soccer's attacking positions — FORWARD, NO. 9, STRIKER, TARGET MAN — follow. MLB father-and-son surnames — ALOU, BONDS, FIELDER, GRIFFEY — require a longer memory. And the purple category, the hardest, asks players to complete phrases ending in RANGE: 3-POINT, DRIVING, LONG, MID.
What the game ultimately builds is a daily ritual — a reason to return each morning the way Wordle players return for their single word. The puzzle resets at midnight, results get shared, and the cycle begins again. For the Times, it is audience architecture. For the players, it is something smaller and more personal: a few minutes each day to find out how much of what they love they still carry with them.
The New York Times has extended its daily word puzzle empire into sports territory with Connections: Sports Edition, a game that arrived in partnership with The Athletic, the Times' sports journalism arm. Unlike its parent game, this version demands familiarity with athletic terminology and history rather than general knowledge, making it a specialized challenge for fans who live and breathe their sports.
The mechanics are straightforward enough. Players face a board of sixteen words and must sort them into four groups of four, where each group shares a hidden connection. The puzzle resets every twenty-four hours, and with each new iteration, the difficulty climbs. Today's edition—puzzle number 571—pulls from baseball, soccer, and MLB family history, requiring players to think across multiple sports at once.
The game's structure mirrors the original Connections in most respects. Each category carries a color code that signals its difficulty: yellow is the easiest entry point, followed by green, then blue, and finally purple for the toughest grouping. Players get four mistakes before the game ends. They can shuffle the board to rearrange words visually, which sometimes helps patterns emerge. When a player correctly identifies all four words in a category, those words vanish from the board, making the remaining connections easier to spot.
Today's puzzle tests knowledge across four distinct domains. The yellow category asks players to identify things an umpire calls during a baseball game—the words BALL, OUT, SAFE, and STRIKE. Moving to green, the puzzle shifts to soccer terminology, specifically the names for attacking players: FORWARD, NO. 9, STRIKER, and TARGET MAN. The blue category dives into baseball history, asking for surnames of MLB father-and-son pairs: ALOU, BONDS, FIELDER, and GRIFFEY. The purple category, the hardest, requires players to complete phrases that end with the word RANGE—3-POINT, DRIVING, LONG, and MID.
What makes Connections: Sports Edition distinct from its parent game is the assumption of domain expertise. A casual puzzle player might solve the original Connections without knowing much about anything in particular. But this version assumes you know baseball well enough to recognize umpire calls, that you follow soccer closely enough to know the positional terminology, and that you have some grasp of MLB family legacies. It's a game designed for people who already spend time thinking about sports.
The game launched as a collaboration between the Times and The Athletic, which the Times acquired in 2022 and now operates as its sports coverage engine. By creating a sports-specific version of Connections, the Times is essentially building a daily ritual for its sports audience—a reason to return every morning, the same way Wordle players return for their daily word challenge. Players can share their results on social media, creating a social feedback loop that drives engagement.
Like Wordle before it, Connections: Sports Edition has become part of the daily routine for thousands of players. The puzzle resets at midnight, and a new set of sixteen words appears. Some days the connections feel obvious; other days they require lateral thinking or specialized knowledge. Today's puzzle, with its mix of baseball fundamentals, soccer terminology, and MLB history, sits somewhere in the middle—accessible to anyone who follows sports, but not so easy that it feels like a waste of time.
Notable Quotes
The game is all about finding the common threads between words, with each new set getting trickier as difficulty increases— Mashable's explanation of Connections mechanics
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
Why does the Times keep making these word games? Isn't one enough?
Each one serves a different audience. Wordle is for everyone. Strands is for people who like wordplay and lateral thinking. Connections: Sports Edition is for people who want their daily puzzle to actually test what they know about sports.
So it's not just a cash grab—it's actually targeted?
Exactly. The Times owns The Athletic now, which means they have a sports audience that's already paying attention. Why not give them a reason to come back every single day with something designed specifically for them?
What makes today's puzzle harder than, say, a regular Connections?
The categories require you to know specific terminology. You need to know that 'target man' is a soccer position, that 'no. 9' refers to a striker, that these are all the same thing. Someone who doesn't follow soccer closely might miss that connection entirely.
And the father-son duos category—that's pure baseball history knowledge?
Completely. You either know that Moises and Felipe Alou were both major leaguers, or you don't. There's no way to guess your way through that one.
Does knowing sports actually make you better at the game, or is it just about pattern recognition?
Both. You need the sports knowledge to understand what the words mean, but then you still have to see how they connect. Someone could know all the baseball terms and still miss that BALL, OUT, SAFE, and STRIKE are all things an umpire specifically calls—not just baseball words in general.