Connections Sports Edition #778 Answers, November 10, 2026

Connections: Sports Edition from The Athletic and New York Times (NYT) Games is puzzle #778 on Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026. Two hints per color come first. The answers, a note on each school nickname and the decoys follow in a spoiler section.

Today’s board hides its trouble in plain sight, and the rules are on our Connections page.

Tuesday’s hints, #778, Nov. 10, 2026

Some tiles look like they belong in two places at once. Sort the sixteen in your head before tapping any of them.

• Yellow hint 1: Four ways to say the same score, and none of them is the digit.
• Yellow hint 2: One tile is the word used for zero in soccer scores.
• Green hint 1: Four people who each sit on one side of a table when money is being settled.
• Green hint 2: Each tile is a role, not a team or a place.
• Blue hint 1: Four nicknames that all belong to colleges in one athletic conference.
• Blue hint 2: None of the four is a pro team, and one is a short word that sounds like a quick motion.
• Purple hint 1: Look inside each tile, not at the whole word.
• Purple hint 2: The hidden piece is a pro football team’s nickname, and it is singular.

Why Tuesday’s board is tricky

Two breakfast foods sit on the board, and a sharp eye may go hunting for more snacks. Two animal words show up as well, and they do not land in the same color. A pair of job titles sounds like it could start a team-names group, yet they work in a different way here.

Hold your first guess until one color is certain. Our printable weekly calendar has room for a streak.

Yesterday’s page is Connections: Sports Edition #777. The main game’s Connections hints and answers for Nov. 10 are on a separate page.

Tuesday’s answers, #778, Nov. 10, 2026 (spoilers)

Stop here if you are still sorting. Beebom and Nerd’s Chalk both print these four groups, and the blue one is built on the Mid-American Conference (MAC).

• Yellow, “Slang for zero”: Bagel, Donut, Goose Egg, Nil
• Green, “People involved in a contract negotiation”: Agent, General Manager, Owner, Player
• Blue, “MAC team nicknames”: Bobcats, Chippewas, Minutemen, Zips
• Purple, “Ends in an NFL team, in singular form”: Beagle, Handkerchief, Million, Program

Which schools use the four blue nicknames?

The blue group is a set of MAC nicknames. Each one is named on its school’s official athletics site.

Tile	Who it is	Official page
Bobcats	Ohio University athletics	ohiobobcats.com
Chippewas	Central Michigan University athletics	cmuchippewas.com
Minutemen	University of Massachusetts athletics	umassathletics.com
Zips	University of Akron athletics	gozips.com

What do the yellow and green tiles mean?

Yellow is slang for a score of nothing. Nil is the usual word in soccer scores, and a goose egg is a zero on a scoreboard. Bagel and Donut borrow the round shape of the numeral.

Green is the cast of a contract negotiation: the Player who signs, the Agent who speaks for them, the General Manager who builds the roster and the Owner who approves the money.

Where does each pro team hide in the purple words?

The team name sits at the end of each word, spelled the same way.

Tile	Hidden team name	Team
Beagle	Eagle	Philadelphia Eagles
Handkerchief	Chief	Kansas City Chiefs
Million	Lion	Detroit Lions
Program	Ram	Los Angeles Rams

Why Tuesday’s decoys work

Bagel, Donut and Goose Egg all sound like zero, but the food angle tempts you to look for a fourth snack. Nil has no food meaning at all, which makes it the tile that confirms the group.

Beagle and Bobcats are both animals, and the lion inside Million is a big cat as well. Only the hidden-ending rule separates the purple tiles from the blue ones. Player and Owner could pass for team words, and Agent could be a spy, so the green group can take longer to see than its color suggests.