Hints
Today’s Connections (Sports Edition) is a tough one, and the title “Sports” is only the starting point. The trick is that each category is tied to a different kind of sports knowledge: fitness wording, coaching roles, well-known nicknames, and even the beginnings of conference teams.
The puzzle is nicely layered. You can usually grab the easiest set first, then work your way toward the more “wait, what?” category.
Yellow (easiest): Think about bodies and conditioning. The words describe being in good physical shape.
Green: These are team leaders in the NFL—head coaches, current ones.
Blue: Famous sports “curses.” These aren’t literal supernatural curses so much as the iconic sports legends people love to repeat.
Purple (tough): Starts of Big Ten team names. The entries are the opening word pieces you’d see at the beginning of each team name.
If you’re stuck, a good strategy is to treat each category as its own mini-logic puzzle: once you identify the relationship (fitness, coaches, cursed nicknames, or Big Ten starters), the rest of the set tends to fall into place quickly.
Answers
Yellow group (in good shape): agile, athletic, fit and strong
Green group (current NFL head coaches): Coen, Glenn, Reid and Ryans
Blue group (famous sports “curses”): Bambino, Billy Goat, Madden and SI cover
Purple group (starts of Big Ten team names): boil, buck, corn and hawk
Sports-themed Connections tends to reward the kind of knowledge you build over time—head-coach familiarity, classic media lore, and even conference-name trivia. The satisfying part of this one is that the final category still makes sense once you see the “Big Ten starts” pattern.
