Today’s Connections (Sports Edition) plays more fair than most: three categories snap into place quickly, and the purple group takes a bit more mental pivoting. The good news? One clue is basically begging you to think about a specific state.
If you’re solving in real time, try building momentum from the easier set first. Once you’ve got one theme pinned, the rest of the board usually starts cooperating.
Hints
Yellow group (easiest): Words that describe getting better at something through repeated effort.
Green group: Teams connected to the Beehive State.
Blue group: Baseball managers known well enough to earn a spot in the Hall of Fame.
Purple group (trickiest): Golf scoring terms that start a phrase you might see in sports branding or nicknames.
Answers
Yellow: exercise, practice, train, work out
Green: Jazz, Mammoth, Royals, Utes
Blue: Leyland, Mack, Stengel, Weaver
Purple: ace (Acela), bogey (bogeyman), eagle (eagle-eyed), par (paradise)
One satisfying strategy for puzzles like this: when the category feels “sports-y,” look for names first (teams, people), then zoom out to how they’re being grouped. Here, the Utah hint does the heavy lifting—and the purple answers reward the moment you recognize the golf scoring starts.
