Hey there, sports fans! Happy Saturday. In case you missed it, The New York Times and The Athletic launched a spin-off of Connections this week. Connections: Sports Edition is fairly self-explanatory for Connections fans, though there’s one key difference that I’ll get into in my description of how the game is played.

Today’s NYT Connections: Sports Edition hints and answers are coming right up.

How To Play Connections: Sports Edition

Connections: Sports Edition is a free daily New York Times game. You get a new puzzle at midnight every day and you can play on the NYT website. It works just like the regular Connections game, except everything is sports-related.

You’re presented with a grid of 16 words. Your task is to arrange them into four groups of four by figuring out the links between them. The groups could be things like teams in a certain city, athletes who won Olympic gold in a certain discipline or various sports terms linked by a color.

There’s only one solution for each puzzle, and you’ll need to be careful when it comes to words that might fit into more than one category. You can shuffle the words to perhaps help you see links between them.

Each group is color coded. The yellow group is usually the easiest to figure out, blue and green fall in the middle, and the purple group is usually the most difficult one. The purple group often involves wordplay.

Select four words you think go together and press Submit. If you make a guess and you’re incorrect, you’ll lose a life. If you’re close to having a correct group, you might see a message telling you that you’re one word away from getting it right, but you’ll still need to figure out which one to swap.

If you make four mistakes, it’s game over. Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen with the help of some hints, and, if you’re really struggling, today’s Connections answers. As with Wordle and other similar games, it’s easy to share results with your friends on social media and group chats.

There are two main differences from the regular Connections game. first, the grid sometimes includes a logo instead of a word. There’s also a timer, so you can challenge your friends to see who can complete the grid the fastest.

On a personal note, I’m happy to have a second game of Connections to play every day, but I’m not confident I’ll fare all that well. I don’t know a ton about North American sports, despite living in Canada for well over a decade. I’m primarily a European football-not-soccer guy. I know almost nothing about the college sports system, for instance, and I’m bad with team logos. But I do have good general knowledge, so I might be able to power through trickier games.

Today’s Connections: Sports Edition Hints

Scroll slowly! Just after the hints for each of today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups, I’ll reveal what the groups are without immediately telling you which words go into them.

Here’s what the grid looks like:

Today’s 16 words and logos are…

• COMMANDERS
• CHARGERS
• DINGER
• ROUGH
• TATER
• WIZARDS
• MUSTANGS
• JACK
• BRONCOS
• BUNKER
• SPIRIT
• TRAIL BLAZERS
• SLAM
• GREEN
• D.C. UNITED
• FAIRWAY

And the hints for today’s groups are:

• Yellow group — you’ll need wood and iron to reach these
• Green group — knock it out of the park
• Blue group — teams from a certain area
• Purple group — these teams have plenty of drive

Today’s Connections: Sports Edition Groups

Need some extra help?

Be warned: we’re starting to get into spoiler territory.

Today’s groups are…

• Yellow group — areas on a golf course
• Green group — slang for home run
• Blue group — D.C. sports teams
• Purple group — teams that share names with cars

Today’s Connections: Sports Edition Answers?

Spoiler alert! Don’t scroll any further down the page until you’re ready to find out today’s Connections: Sports Edition answers.

This is your final warning!

Today’s Connections: Sports Edition answers are…

• Yellow group — areas on a golf course (BUNKER, FAIRWAY, GREEN, ROUGH)
• Green group — slang for home run (DINGER, JACK, SLAM, TATER)
• Blue group — D.C. sports teams (COMMANDERS, SPIRIT, UNITED, WIZARDS)
• Purple group — teams that share names with cars (BRONCOS, CHARGERS, MUSTANGS, TRAIL BLAZERS)

No perfect game today, but here’s how I fared:

Time: 01:37

🟡🟡🟡🟡

🔵🔵🟢🔵

🔵🔵🔵🔵

🟣🟣🟣🟣

🟢🟢🟢🟢

I know golf well enough that the yellows jumped out immediately (sidenote: the President’s Cup is being held not too far away from me this weekend). I had an idea about the blues thanks to the D.C. UNITED logo and WIZARDS, but incorrectly included SLAM instead of SPIRIT at first. I corrected that error after an “aha!” moment.

The purple group was next, and I got lucky here. BRONCOS, CHARGERS and a horse made sense together. I had no idea what the TRAIL BLAZERS logo represented (or that a Trailblazer is a car) but that seemed to be a better fit than any of the greens. After that, I submitted the green group for victory.

That’s all there is to it for today’s Connections: Sports Edition clues and answers. Be sure to check my blog for hints and the solution for Sunday’s game if you need them.

P.S. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been including a recommendation of some kind, usually a song, in my daily Connections guide. I figure I could do the same here but keep it sports-related.

Let’s start with my absolute favorite goal of all time, with James McFadden firing home the winner for my beloved Scotland against France in a Euro 2008 qualifier.

The inch-perfect goal kick, the touch, the turn, the swift strike, the bend of the ball, Mickaël Landreau getting a touch but being unable to keep it out… An unbelievable goal.

It was one of those very special moments that you remember forever, including when and where you saw it. I was in the pub, losing my mind. I called my dad after the game, then my friend and I agreed we had to stay out until the early hours to celebrate a famous win. A fantastic night:

Radio broadcaster Peter Martin’s commentary of that moment is almost as famous as the goal itself. Seventeen years on and I can still quote this word for word (I just ordered a print of it to put on my wall too). Pick it out, Landreau: