Another reason to open the Times app before breakfast
In the long tradition of games that reward specialized knowledge, the New York Times and The Athletic have joined forces to offer a daily puzzle that asks sports fans to find the hidden order within sixteen seemingly scattered terms. Connections Sports Edition, launched in November 2025, is less about vocabulary than about the particular fluency that comes from years of following teams, stadiums, and conferences. It is a small daily ritual designed for those who find meaning at the intersection of language and sport.
- The New York Times is expanding its already-formidable daily puzzle empire, this time aiming squarely at sports fans who have felt left out of the wordplay.
- The game demands a rare double fluency — you must know your sports well enough to recognize McCovey Cove or the Patriot League, and think laterally enough to see the hidden category binding them.
- The partnership with The Athletic, acquired by the Times in 2022, gives the puzzle credibility and depth, blending sports journalism expertise with the Times' proven game infrastructure.
- For devoted sports fans, the game lands as a welcome addition to the morning routine; for casual followers, it risks feeling like a quiz they didn't study for.
- With Wordle, Connections, Strands, and the Mini Crossword already in the fold, the Times is steadily building a daily habit loop — and Connections Sports Edition is its latest hook.
The New York Times has expanded its daily puzzle lineup by partnering with The Athletic to launch Connections Sports Edition, a sports-specific variant of its popular word-grouping game. Like the original, it presents sixteen words on a grid and asks players to sort them into four groups of four — but here, every term comes from the world of sport, and the game resets each night at midnight Eastern time.
The categories are the real puzzle. A recent edition asked players to identify Canadian NHL teams with their plural S removed, famous ballpark landmarks, college athletic conferences, and phrases that secretly begin with NBA team names — so that "Heat Check," "Magic Johnson," "Buckskin," and "Sunscreen" all belong together once you see the trick. Solving it requires both genuine sports knowledge and the willingness to think sideways.
The collaboration makes natural sense: The Athletic supplies the sports fluency, while the Times provides the design and distribution machinery that has already turned Wordle and Connections into daily rituals for millions. The result is a puzzle that assumes its audience can tell the Patriot League from the Sun Belt Conference and knows why McCovey Cove matters.
Whether Connections Sports Edition earns a permanent place in the morning routines of sports-minded solvers is still an open question. But the Times is clearly wagering that there is a meaningful audience living at the crossroads of athletic devotion and the quiet pleasure of imposing order on a grid before the day begins.
The New York Times has added another game to its growing collection of daily puzzles, this time partnering with The Athletic to launch Connections Sports Edition. The new game follows the same structure as the original Connections puzzle—sixteen words arranged on a grid, waiting to be sorted into four groups of four—but trades general vocabulary for sports terminology. Each puzzle resets at midnight Eastern time, giving players a fresh challenge every morning.
The game works like this: you're presented with sixteen sports-related words or phrases, and your job is to figure out which four belong together based on a hidden category. The categories themselves are the puzzle. On November 12, 2025, for instance, puzzle number 415 featured Canadian NHL teams stripped of their plural S (Canuck, Jet, Maple Leaf, Oiler), famous baseball stadium landmarks (Green Monster, Home Run Apple, McCovey Cove, Monument Park), college athletic conferences (Ivy, Missouri Valley, Patriot, Sun Belt), and phrases that begin with NBA team names (Buckskin, Heat Check, Magic Johnson, Sunscreen).
For people already committed to the daily grind of Wordle, the original Connections, Strands, and the Mini Crossword, this represents another layer of obligation—or, depending on your perspective, another layer of pleasure. The appeal is straightforward: if you care about sports and you care about word puzzles, here's a game designed specifically for you. The categories require both sports knowledge and lateral thinking. You need to know that the Miami Heat exists to understand that "Heat Check" belongs in the NBA team category, but you also need to make the conceptual leap that connects these four phrases in the first place.
The partnership between the Times and The Athletic, the sports journalism outlet the Times acquired in 2022, makes structural sense. The Athletic brings sports expertise; the Times brings the game design and distribution infrastructure. The result is a puzzle that assumes its audience knows the difference between the Patriot League and the Sun Belt Conference, recognizes McCovey Cove as the splash-hit zone at Oracle Park, and understands that "Buckskin" is a pun waiting to happen (Milwaukee Bucks + buckskin).
For casual sports fans, the game might prove frustrating. For devoted ones, it's another reason to open the Times app before breakfast. Like all of the Times' daily games, Connections Sports Edition offers that particular satisfaction of solving something before moving on with your day—a small cognitive victory, a moment of order imposed on chaos. Whether it becomes a permanent fixture in the daily routine of sports-minded puzzle solvers remains to be seen, but the Times has clearly bet that there's an audience for it.
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Why does the Times keep launching new games? Don't they already have enough?
They're not really competing with themselves. Each game scratches a different itch. Wordle is pure vocabulary. Connections is about lateral thinking. This one assumes you actually care about sports.
But couldn't someone just play the regular Connections and ignore the sports version?
Sure. But if you're the kind of person who reads The Athletic, you probably want a puzzle that respects your knowledge. It's not dumbed down.
What makes the categories tricky?
They're not just "NBA teams." They're "phrases that start with NBA team names." That's a layer of wordplay on top of sports knowledge. You have to think twice.
Is this sustainable? Can they make a new puzzle every single day?
The Athletic has a whole sports journalism operation. They know the landscape. The real question is whether people will actually play it, or if it just becomes another app notification they ignore.
Who's the intended audience?
Someone who's already doing Wordle and Connections, who reads about sports seriously, and who has fifteen minutes every morning. It's a very specific person, but that person exists.