Looking for Monday’s Connections: Sports Edition hints and answers instead? You can find them here:

ForbesToday’s NYT ‘Connections: Sports Edition’ Hints And Answers For Monday, September 30By Kris Holt

Hey, gang! I hope your week is off to a great start. I’m excited to catch some Champions League action today. I’m very interested to see if Celtic can maintain their momentum away at Borussia Dortmund.

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.

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…

• MAYO
• MUSTARD
• LANDSLIDE
• EVERT
• LAUGHER
• CANALES
• KING
• POP
• ZIP
• GRAF
• RUNAWAY
• CALLAHAN
• SHARAPOVA
• MACDONALD
• VELOCITY
• ROMP

And the hints for today’s groups are:

• Yellow group — easy win
• Green group — often measured in miles per hour
• Blue group — icons of the court
• Purple group — sideline rookies

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 — blowout
• Green group — speed
• Blue group — women to achieve career Grand Slam
• Purple group — first-year N.F.L. head coaches

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 — blowout (LANDSLIDE, LAUGHER, ROMP, RUNAWAY)
• Green group — speed (MUSTARD, POP, VELOCITY, ZIP)
• Blue group — women to achieve career Grand Slam (EVERT, GRAF, KING, SHARAPOVA)
• Purple group — first-year N.F.L. head coaches (CALLAHAN, CANALES, MACDONALD, MAYO)

My third straight perfect game gives me a four-game streak. Here’s how I fared:

🔵🔵🔵🔵

🟢🟢🟢🟢

🟡🟡🟡🟡

🟣🟣🟣🟣

The blues jumped out at me right away as tennis icons. I actually wasn’t aware Maria Sharapova won a career Grand Slam, so good for her. The greens were next once I realized MUSTARD was the fourth word I needed.

The yellows were fairly clear to me too, but I had to take a gamble on LAUGHER, as I’d never heard of it in that context. That left the other four names (for which I would not have figured out the connection) for the win.

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 Wednesday’s game if you need them.

P.S. I promise not to highlight my own team too much in these little post scripts, but I want to share one more favorite memory about Dundee United. I went to the Scottish Cup final in 2010 for what was only my second trip to Hampden Park, after seeing AC/DC there the previous year. We won 3-0 with some great goals to lift the cup for just the second time in our history. This was one of the best days of my life: