The connection isn't about what these people do—it's about the name they share.
Each day, a small grid of sixteen words invites players to find the invisible threads binding them together — a ritual that transforms sports trivia into something closer to philosophy: the search for hidden order in apparent chaos. The New York Times Connections Sports Edition #568, published April 14th, continues this tradition by weaving boxing, baseball, shared surnames, and cleverly misspelled NBA teams into a single daily challenge. It is a modest game, but it asks an ancient question — what do these things have in common? — and trusts that the answer, as always, is hiding in plain sight.
- Sixteen words sit on a board like strangers at a party, and the player's only job is to figure out who already knows each other.
- One wrong guess costs a life, and with only four mistakes allowed, the pressure to think before committing quietly mounts with every round.
- The puzzle moves from the concrete — boxing gloves, a speed bag — to the abstract, where Bucky, Heap, Spurt, and Sung must be decoded as NBA teams with their final letters deliberately scrambled.
- The blue category's trick is the sharpest: Buddy, Matt, Nolan, and Rex share nothing obvious until the surname Ryan snaps them into focus across football, baseball, and coaching history.
- Players shuffle, second-guess, and eventually share their color-coded results on social media, turning a solitary word game into a daily communal ritual.
- The game resets at midnight regardless of outcome, offering the same quiet promise it always does: another puzzle, another chance, another hidden pattern waiting to be found.
The New York Times has extended its daily puzzle franchise into sports territory, and Connections: Sports Edition #568 is the latest test of that formula. The premise is deceptively simple — sixteen words, four hidden groups of four, and a shrinking margin for error. Get a group right and it disappears from the board. Get one wrong and you lose a life, with only four mistakes standing between you and defeat.
The puzzle scales in difficulty from yellow to purple, and today's categories span a wide range of sports knowledge. The yellow group is the most accessible: boxing equipment — gloves, mouthguard, shorts, speed bag. The green group turns technical, asking players to identify the four arm slots a baseball pitcher can use: overhand, sidearm, submarine, and three-quarters.
The blue category is where the puzzle sharpens. Buddy, Matt, Nolan, and Rex appear unrelated until you recognize that each is a first name belonging to someone with the surname Ryan — a football coach, an NFL quarterback, a Hall of Fame pitcher, and another football coach. The connection isn't about sport or era; it's about a shared name hiding across decades.
The purple category, the hardest, abandons sports knowledge almost entirely in favor of lateral thinking. Bucky, Heap, Spurt, and Sung are the Milwaukee Bucks, Memphis Grizzlies, San Antonio Spurs, and Los Angeles Lakers — each with its final letters altered or misspelled. It is less a sports question than a riddle.
Developed in partnership with The Athletic, the game resets every night at midnight. Players can shuffle the board, share color-coded results on social media, and return the next day for a slightly trickier version of the same essential question: what do these things have in common? The answer is always there. Finding it is the whole point.
The New York Times has built a franchise out of daily word puzzles, and now it's extended that formula into sports territory. Connections: Sports Edition #568, released on April 14th, is the latest iteration of a game that asks players to do something deceptively simple: find what four words have in common, then do it three more times.
The game itself is straightforward in concept but demanding in execution. Sixteen words sit on the board. Your job is to sort them into four groups of four, where each group shares a hidden thread. Get one group right and those words vanish. Get one wrong and you lose a life—you get four mistakes before the game ends. The difficulty scales visually: yellow categories are easiest, then green, then blue, then purple, which is where the puzzle makers have hidden their sharpest tricks.
Today's puzzle, developed in partnership with The Athletic (the sports publication owned by the Times), tests knowledge across multiple sports disciplines. The yellow category—the entry point—asks you to identify boxing equipment: gloves, a mouthguard, shorts, and a speed bag. These are the tools of the ring, concrete and recognizable. The green category pivots to baseball, where the connection is more technical: overhand, sidearm, submarine, and three-quarters are the four primary arm slots a pitcher can use when throwing. A casual sports fan might know some of these; a baseball enthusiast would spot them immediately.
The blue category introduces a different kind of puzzle. Buddy, Matt, Nolan, and Rex don't seem to belong together until you realize they're all first names that can precede the surname Ryan. Buddy Ryan was a legendary football coach. Matt Ryan is an NFL quarterback. Nolan Ryan is perhaps the most famous pitcher in baseball history. Rex Ryan is another football coach. The connection isn't about what these people do—it's about the name they share.
The purple category, marked as the hardest, requires a different kind of thinking entirely. Bucky, Heap, Spurt, and Sung don't immediately read as NBA teams. But they're actually the Milwaukee Bucks, the Memphis Grizzlies, the San Antonio Spurs, and the Los Angeles Lakers with their final letters altered or misspelled. This is where the puzzle stops being about sports knowledge and starts being about pattern recognition and lateral thinking.
Connections resets every day at midnight, and each new puzzle is designed to be slightly trickier than the last. Players can shuffle the board to help spot connections, and they can share their results on social media—a feature that has turned the game into a social ritual for millions of people. The sports edition, launched in association with The Athletic, brings the same daily reset structure to a niche audience: people who care about sports and enjoy word games.
If you didn't solve #568, another puzzle will be waiting tomorrow. The game's appeal lies partly in its difficulty and partly in its consistency. It asks the same question every day in a slightly different way: what do these things have in common? The answer is always hiding in plain sight.
Notable Quotes
The sports Connections can be played on both web browsers and mobile devices and require players to group four words that share something in common.— Mashable's description of the game mechanics
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
Why does a puzzle game need a sports edition at all? Isn't Connections already plenty hard?
The sports edition isn't about making it harder—it's about making it specific. A regular Connections player might not know who Nolan Ryan is, but a sports fan will. It's narrowing the audience to people who actually care about the subject.
So it's not a separate game, really. It's the same game with different words.
Exactly. The structure is identical. But the connections themselves are rooted in sports knowledge and sports culture. You need to know baseball arm slots or boxing equipment or NBA team names.
That blue category with the Ryans—that's clever. It's not about sports at all, is it?
No, it's about names. That's where the puzzle gets you. You're thinking about sports, and suddenly the connection has nothing to do with sports. It's just people who share a surname.
And the NBA teams with misspelled letters—that seems almost unfair.
It does, but that's the purple category. That's supposed to be the hardest. By the time you get there, you've already solved three other puzzles. You're warmed up. Your brain is in the right mode.
Do people actually share their results?
All the time. It's become a social thing, like Wordle. You solve it, you screenshot your grid, you post it. It's a small daily ritual that connects people.