The puzzle is harder if you don't know the sport's language
In the quiet ritual of the morning puzzle, The New York Times and The Athletic have carved out a new corner of daily habit — a sports-flavored Connections challenge that asks players to find order among apparent chaos. Today's edition, number 572, centers on hockey, rewarding those who know the difference between a biscuit and a puck, or understand that icing means something very different on the ice than it does on a cake. It is a small but telling reminder that knowledge, even the specialized kind, carries its own quiet pleasure when it finds its moment to be useful.
- The NYT's Connections Sports Edition raises the stakes for casual players by diving deep into hockey's specialized vocabulary, leaving non-fans scrambling for footing.
- Sixteen words, four hidden groupings, and only four mistakes allowed — the puzzle's tight structure creates genuine tension with every selection.
- The cleverest trap lies in the blue and purple categories, where arena name fragments and food words moonlighting as hockey terms demand lateral thinking over raw recall.
- Players can shuffle the board and eliminate solved categories to gradually clear the fog, turning a daunting grid into a manageable challenge.
- The daily reset mechanism and Mashable's companion hint guides together form a feedback loop that keeps players returning, puzzle after puzzle, morning after morning.
The New York Times has extended its daily puzzle empire into sports territory, launching a Connections variant in partnership with The Athletic. Today's installment — number 572 — is built around hockey, giving devoted fans a clear edge while testing everyone else's ability to think sideways.
The game's premise is elegantly simple: 16 words, four groups of four, each group bound by a hidden common thread. Difficulty scales by color, from yellow at the easiest to purple at the most demanding, and players are allowed only four mistakes before the game closes on them.
Today's yellow category covers the basics — the four ways a goal can be scored in hockey: empty net, even strength, power play, and short-handed. Green moves into recent Stanley Cup history, naming the Avalanche, Golden Knights, Lightning, and Panthers as the last four champions. Blue tests arena knowledge through fragments — Ball, Canadian Tire, Capital One, and TD — pieces of venue names that only attentive followers of the league would recognize.
The purple category is where the puzzle earns its reputation for difficulty. Apple, biscuit, grinder, and icing are all hockey terms hiding in plain sight as food words — an assist, a puck, a type of player, and a penalty, respectively. It's the kind of wordplay that rewards those who can hold two meanings in mind at once.
The game resets each day, sustaining the same quiet morning ritual that Wordle made familiar — a few minutes of focused thinking before the day takes over. For those who fall short, Mashable's daily hint guides are already waiting, part of the broader culture of puzzle companionship that has grown up around these small, satisfying daily challenges.
The New York Times has built a loyal following around its daily word puzzles, and now it's doubling down on that habit by launching a sports-specific version of Connections in partnership with The Athletic, its sports journalism arm. Today's puzzle—number 572—leans heavily on hockey knowledge, which means fans of the sport will find themselves at a distinct advantage while everyone else scrambles for context clues.
Connections works on a simple premise: you're given 16 words and asked to find four groups of four, where each group shares a hidden thread. The challenge is that multiple words might seem to belong together, but only one grouping is correct. The game color-codes its difficulty—yellow for easiest, then green, blue, and purple for the toughest—and you get four mistakes before the game ends. It's the kind of puzzle that rewards both broad knowledge and lateral thinking, the ability to see connections that aren't immediately obvious.
Today's hockey edition splits neatly into four categories. The yellow group, meant to be the most accessible, covers types of hockey goals: empty net, even strength, power play, and short-handed. These are the fundamental ways a goal can be scored in the sport, each with its own tactical meaning. The green category shifts to recent Stanley Cup history, naming the last four teams to claim the trophy: the Avalanche, Golden Knights, Lightning, and Panthers. For anyone who follows professional hockey closely, these names should land quickly.
The blue category tests knowledge of NHL arena names, but here's where the puzzle gets clever. The words aren't the full names of the arenas—they're fragments. Ball, Canadian Tire, Capital One, and TD are all parts of actual venue names, the kind of detail that separates casual fans from people who actually follow the league. The purple category, marked as the hardest, plays with language itself. It lists hockey terms that double as food items: apple, biscuit, grinder, and icing. An apple is a hockey assist; a biscuit is slang for the puck; a grinder is a type of player; and icing is both a penalty and a dessert topping.
The game resets daily, which means there's a built-in incentive to return. Players can shuffle the board to help spot connections, and once they solve a category, those words disappear, making the remaining puzzle easier to parse. The game works across web browsers and mobile devices, fitting neatly into the daily ritual that Wordle established—that moment in the morning when you sit down with coffee and a puzzle, trying to solve something before the day pulls you away.
For those who crack today's puzzle, there's already tomorrow waiting. For those who don't, Mashable will be back with fresh hints and solutions, part of the growing ecosystem of daily puzzle guides that have become as much a part of the morning routine as the news itself.
La Conversación del Hearth Otra perspectiva de la historia
Why does a sports version of Connections matter? Isn't the original game enough?
The original Connections is language-agnostic. It works for anyone. But a sports edition lets The Athletic—and the Times—speak directly to people who actually care about sports trivia. It's narrowcasting.
So it's not just a puzzle. It's a loyalty play.
Exactly. You're building a daily habit with an audience that's already invested in sports coverage. They come for the puzzle, they stay for the reporting.
This puzzle is clearly built for hockey fans. What about people who don't follow the sport?
They're going to struggle. That's intentional. The puzzle is harder if you don't know that an apple is an assist or that a biscuit is the puck. But that's also what makes it satisfying when you solve it—you've learned something.
The color-coding system—yellow, green, blue, purple—does that actually help?
It helps you manage your mistakes. You know where to start, where the safe ground is. But the real trick is that sometimes the obvious connection is wrong. You have to think sideways.
What happens tomorrow?
A new puzzle. Same format, different words, different sport probably. The cycle continues.