Connections Sports Edition #779 Answers, November 11, 2026

Puzzle #779 of Connections: Sports Edition, from The Athletic and New York Times (NYT) Games, lands on Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2026. Hints for each color come first, with one nudge at a time. The answers, who stands behind each name and a look at the decoys wait below the spoiler line.

Today’s board plays with look-alikes, and the rules are on our Connections page.

Wednesday’s hints, #779, Nov. 11, 2026

Read all sixteen tiles twice before you commit. At least one word you know from the pro league scene is hiding in a college setting.

• Yellow hint 1: Picture a gym with a net across the middle of the floor; these are things you would hear called out there.
• Yellow hint 2: One tile is the hard downward strike that ends a rally, and another is the contact that opens a point.
• Green hint 1: Four school nicknames, each in the singular, as if you were naming one player.
• Green hint 2: Two name animals or birds, and two name a kind of person.
• Blue hint 1: Four people with four different sports behind them: baseball, football, skateboarding and surfing.
• Blue hint 2: If you have ever held a controller, one of these names was likely on the screen in front of you.
• Purple hint 1: Each tile is an incomplete phrase; one more word has to follow it.
• Purple hint 2: The missing word is a single short syllable, and it fits after every one of the four.

Why Wednesday’s board is tricky

Two of the tiles are flying creatures, and the pull to put them together is strong. They belong to different colors. A tile that reads like a famous football team from Texas points to a college instead. A few short action words could belong to more than one sport, so ask which court or field each one comes from.

Lock one color before you guess a second. A printable weekly calendar gives you a place to track a streak.

Yesterday’s page is Connections: Sports Edition #778. The main game has its own page: Connections hints and answers for Nov. 11.

Wednesday’s answers, #779, Nov. 11, 2026 (spoilers)

Last chance to turn back. Beebom and Parade (read through its credited republication on Pressbee) print the same four groups and sixteen tiles.

• Yellow, “Volleyball terms”: Dig, Serve, Set, Spike
• Green, “A Big 12 athlete”: Bear, Cowboy, Jayhawk, Mountaineer
• Blue, “Video game namesakes”: Griffey, Hawk, Madden, Slater
• Purple, ”___ hit”: Base, Clutch, Infield, Late

Which Big 12 schools stand behind the green tiles?

Each green word is the nickname of one Big 12 member. Each school’s own site or the conference site carries it.

Tile	School	Official page
Bear	Baylor University (Baylor Bears)	baylor.edu
Cowboy	Oklahoma State University (Cowboys)	big12sports.com
Jayhawk	University of Kansas	kuathletics.com
Mountaineer	West Virginia University (Mountaineers)	wvusports.com

Who are the four blue names?

All four are people whose names appear on video game titles.

Tile	Who it is	Official page
Griffey	Ken Griffey Jr., baseball player	mlb.com
Hawk	Tony Hawk, behind the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series	tonyhawkthegame.com
Madden	John Madden, behind EA Sports’ Madden NFL series	ea.com
Slater	Kelly Slater, pro surfer	No official page cited

Why do Hawk and Jayhawk end up in different colors?

Bird thinking is the trap. Hawk and Jayhawk look like a pair, and Jayhawk is the Kansas nickname that belongs in green. Hawk stands for the skateboarder Tony Hawk, so it joins the blue names. Check what each tile is called by the people around it, not what animal it resembles.

Cowboy has a second decoy: a big football team in Dallas comes to mind first. The group asks for a single college athlete, and Oklahoma State’s teams are the Cowboys. Set, Serve and Spike sound sporty enough to tempt you toward the baseball-sounding purple words, but all three are volleyball terms and stay together in yellow.

What do the purple words have in common?

Add the word hit after each one: base hit, clutch hit, infield hit and late hit. Each of the four is an ordinary word on its own, which is why the group is hard to spot until the other three colors are sorted.