Finding the hidden thread connecting four words from sixteen
Each day, The New York Times invites players into a small arena of language and sports knowledge, where sixteen words wait to be sorted into four hidden families. Connections: Sports Edition — born from a partnership with The Athletic — asks not just what you know, but how you hold competing possibilities in mind until meaning clicks into place. Puzzle 405 is one more quiet test of attention: whether we are truly watching the world of sport, or merely glancing at it.
- Sixteen words sit on the board and only four mistakes stand between the player and failure — the pressure is quiet but real.
- Today's puzzle cuts across wildly different domains: racket sports, synonyms for prosperity, NFL running backs, and a lateral wordplay challenge around 'golf,' making no single knowledge base sufficient.
- The purple category — disc, links, mini, top — demands the kind of sideways thinking that trips even confident players, since each word hides its connection to 'golf' behind an everyday disguise.
- Players shuffle, second-guess, and narrow possibilities in real time, racing the error counter while holding multiple interpretations open at once.
- Solved or not, the puzzle resets in twenty-four hours — results shared on social media, the cycle renewed, and tomorrow's challenge already waiting.
The New York Times has carried its puzzle ambitions into sports territory with Connections: Sports Edition, built in partnership with The Athletic. The format mirrors the original Connections: sixteen words, four hidden groupings, four chances to be wrong. Each correct set disappears from the board in a color that signals how hard it was — yellow for the obvious, purple for the genuinely tricky.
Puzzle 405 asks players to move across very different kinds of knowledge. The yellow group is the most forgiving — badminton, racquetball, squash, and tennis share the common thread of the racket. The green group leaves sports behind entirely, grouping blossom, develop, flourish, and grow as synonyms for prosperity. The blue category returns to athletics with NFL running backs: Cook, Hall, Swift, and Walker — surnames that reward anyone following professional football closely.
The purple group is where the puzzle earns its difficulty. Disc, links, mini, and top each precede the word 'golf' to form a distinct and real compound — disc golf, links golf, mini golf, Top Golf. The connection is genuine, but reaching it requires holding the words loosely, letting them attach to something unexpected rather than their most obvious meanings.
The game resets every twenty-four hours, growing more intricate as the weeks pass. Players share results, compare streaks, and return the next morning. What the puzzle quietly demands — beyond sports knowledge — is the willingness to sit with ambiguity, to resist the first answer and wait for the one that actually fits.
The New York Times has extended its daily word puzzle empire into sports territory with Connections: Sports Edition, a game that arrived in partnership with The Athletic, the Times' sports journalism arm. Like its parent game, Connections asks players to find the hidden thread connecting four words from a board of sixteen, then repeat the process three more times until the puzzle is solved or mistakes run out.
Today's puzzle—number 405—leans heavily on sports knowledge, particularly if you've spent any time thinking about racket sports or keeping tabs on the NFL's running back landscape. The game works the same way every time: you're given sixteen words, you need to identify which four belong together, and you have four mistakes before the game ends. Get a group right and those words vanish. Get it wrong and the error counter ticks down. The board can be shuffled and rearranged as you work, and each correct grouping is color-coded by difficulty—yellow for easiest, then green, blue, and purple for the trickiest.
Today's four categories break down into distinct territory. The yellow group, meant to be the most straightforward, centers on racket sports: badminton, racquetball, squash, and tennis. These are sports where a racket or paddle is fundamental to play, and recognizing that thread should be relatively quick for anyone with passing sports familiarity. The green category shifts into vocabulary territory—words that mean to prosper or succeed: blossom, develop, flourish, and grow. These are synonyms that share semantic ground rather than sports-specific knowledge.
The blue group requires current NFL awareness. It names four running backs active in the league: Cook, Hall, Swift, and Walker. These are surnames of players who carry the ball for their teams, and spotting the connection demands either following professional football closely or recognizing the pattern once you've narrowed down the possibilities. The purple category, the hardest, plays with language itself: disc, links, mini, and top all precede the word "golf" to create distinct golf-related terms. Disc golf is a recreational sport played with flying discs. Links refers to the style of golf course. Mini golf is the miniaturized version played at amusement venues. Top golf is a commercial golf entertainment brand. Each phrase is real, but the connection—that they all pair with "golf"—requires lateral thinking.
Connections Sports Edition launched as the Times' answer to the appetite for sports-themed word games, building on the success of the original Connections, which has become a daily ritual for millions since its debut. The game resets every twenty-four hours, and each new puzzle introduces fresh combinations of words and categories. Players can share their results on social media, creating a competitive element among friends and followers. The difficulty ramps up as the weeks progress, with later puzzles introducing more obscure references and trickier semantic connections.
If you didn't crack today's puzzle, another one arrives tomorrow, and the cycle continues. The game demands a mix of knowledge, pattern recognition, and the willingness to sit with ambiguity—to hold multiple possible connections in mind until one clicks into place. For sports fans, it's an extra layer of engagement, a daily test of whether you're paying attention to the world of athletics or just passing through.
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Why does the New York Times keep launching new versions of the same game?
Because Connections works. It's simple enough to play in five minutes but hard enough to make you think. Adding a sports edition taps into an audience that's already checking scores and stats every day.
So today's puzzle is harder than usual?
Not necessarily harder—just different. The yellow category is straightforward if you know sports. But the purple one, the golf terms, that's where it gets tricky. You need to see that disc, links, mini, and top all attach to the same word.
What's the appeal of a sports-specific version?
It's permission to be niche. The original Connections tries to be universal, which means some days you're guessing at obscure book titles or software names. Sports Edition assumes you care about athletes and leagues. It's a game built for people who already spend their morning checking box scores.
Do you need to be a serious sports fan to solve it?
Not always. Today's racket sports category is pretty basic—anyone who's played tennis or badminton gets it. But the NFL running backs? That requires you to know who's playing right now. The game rewards current knowledge.
How does this fit into the Times' larger strategy?
It's about habit formation. Wordle became a morning ritual. Connections is trying to do the same thing. Adding a sports edition means The Athletic subscribers have another reason to open the Times app every day.