Today’s Connections is a Sports Edition that starts out fairly straightforward and then gets downright sneaky. Expect familiar sports phrasing in three categories, plus a purple category that asks you to look at NHL team names through a “partial team name inside other words” lens.
If you want to keep the challenge, use the category hints below without peeking at the final sets. And if you’d rather solve quickly, the answers are right after the hints.
Hints
Yellow (easiest): Think baseball fundamentals—numbers you’d expect to see next to a stat line.
Green: The theme is speed, but the words are plural “action” terms that sound like motion.
Blue: These are Hall of Fame running backs. Each answer is a first name—so once you identify the pattern, the remaining names usually fall into place quickly.
Purple (toughest twist): NHL teams, with the first letter removed. The category items themselves are longer words that contain the “team name minus one letter” as a partial chunk.
Answers
Yellow group: errors, hits, runs, walks
Green group: bolts, races, scoots, sprints
Blue group: James, Riggins, Sanders, Sayers
Purple group: angers (Rangers), ruins (Bruins), slanders (Islanders), tars (Stars)
What makes this one especially satisfying is how cleanly each category snaps into focus once you commit to the underlying theme. The purple group is the real brain-teaser: rather than hunting for exact team names, you’re hunting for the team identity hidden inside regular words—NHL fandom, but with a word puzzle’s twist.
