All four are 3 letters long. No two start with the same letter.
2Shape of the category name
The name carries a short qualifier after a comma, so the link is a register or a sense of the words rather than the plain meaning. This is the yellow group, so trust the most literal reading you have.
3The category name
NHL TEAMS, ON SCOREBOARDS
4The 4 words
OTT · CAR · VAN · EDM
Green groupmedium
1Shape of the four words
Letter counts run 2 · 2 · 3 · 4. No two start with the same letter.
2Shape of the category name
The category name is four words long. This is the green group: still literal, but one answer usually has a second meaning.
3The category name
POSITIONS IN FANTASY FOOTBALL
4The 4 words
RB · TE · FLEX · D/ST
Blue grouptricky
1Shape of the four words
Letter counts run 4 · 5 · 6 · 6. No two start with the same letter.
2Shape of the category name
The category name is five words long. This is the blue group, where the link is a shade narrower than it first looks.
3The category name
US OPEN MEN'S SINGLES WINNERS
4The 4 words
SINNER · RAFTER · ASHE · LAVER
Purple grouphardest
1Shape of the four words
Letter counts run 4 · 7 · 7 · 8. Two of them start with the same letter.
2Shape of the category name
The category is a fill-in-the-blank with the blank at the END, so one shared word goes BEFORE each answer. This is the purple group, so expect wordplay rather than a category of things.
Here is the complete grouping for yesterday's Connections Sports Edition, in the order the puzzle ranks them: yellow first as the most direct, then green, then blue, and purple last as the one built on wordplay. If you finished with one group left standing, it was almost certainly purple.
Reading a puzzle you already lost
The useful question is not which words you missed but which pairing pulled you off course. Sports Edition sets its traps by putting a word that clearly belongs to one sport next to three others that only appear to. Spotting that pattern once makes the same trick visible the next time it shows up.
Playing today's puzzle instead? Today's hints are laid out the same way, one layer at a time, and the past week of answers is collected on its own page.
FAQ
Which day does this page show?
The puzzle from the previous calendar day, New York time. It updates automatically at midnight, when today's puzzle takes over the hints page.
Can I look up an older Sports Edition puzzle?
Yes. Every past puzzle is in the archive, grouped by year, and each day has its own page with the full grouping.
Why are the groups ordered yellow, green, blue, purple?
That is the puzzle's own difficulty order. Yellow is the most literal category and purple is usually the wordplay one, so reading them in order shows how the puzzle was meant to unfold.
