Connections Sports Edition #780 Answers, November 12, 2026

Connections: Sports Edition #780, the Thursday, Nov. 12, 2026 board from The Athletic and New York Times (NYT) Games, mixes American leagues with English soccer. Each color gets two hints you can open one at a time. Every answer, and the team or club behind each tile, waits under the spoiler heading.

If you need a refresher on grouping and mistakes, the rules are on our Connections page.

Thursday’s hints, #780, Nov. 12, 2026

Say each tile out loud as a plural and as a surname before you guess. Thursday’s board rewards that habit.

• Yellow hint 1: Think of one player from a pro basketball club, named the way a broadcaster might say “a Celtic” or “a Knick.”
• Yellow hint 2: All four clubs play in the half of the league that sits west of the Mississippi, give or take a few cities.
• Green hint 1: Four teams that share a home state, and one of them is a college program rather than a pro club.
• Green hint 2: Football, hockey and women’s pro basketball fill the other three spots; two of the four play in the same city on Lake Erie.
• Blue hint 1: These four are surnames, and the men who carry them all coach soccer clubs in England’s top division this season.
• Blue hint 2: One of them took over a South Coast club this summer, and one led his side up from the second tier.
• Purple hint 1: Each tile needs a five-letter word added after it to become a piece of sports gear.
• Purple hint 2: Two of those gear items go on water, one on a mountain and one on pavement.

What makes Thursday’s board slippery

Three tiles from three different colors read like nature words: something in the sky, something that falls in winter and a flower. That pull toward a nature group is the main decoy. A fourth tile is both a color and a college. Before you lock a group, ask whether the word is a name someone wears on a jersey or a word that finishes a compound.

Track a streak on a printable weekly calendar. Yesterday’s page is Connections: Sports Edition #779, and the main game has its own Connections hints and answers for Nov. 12.

Thursday’s answers, #780, Nov. 12, 2026 (spoilers)

Turn back now if you still want to solve it. Beebom and Word.tips print the same four groups and all sixteen tiles.

• Yellow, “A Western Conference NBA player”: Laker, Rocket, Sun, Warrior
• Green, “Teams in New York State”: Bills, Liberty, Orange, Sabres
• Blue, “Premier League managers”: Emery, Lampard, Moyes, Rose
• Purple, “___board”: Skate, Snow, Surf, Wake

Which NBA clubs are behind the yellow tiles?

Add an S back on and each tile becomes a club listed in the Western Conference on the NBA’s team page.

Tile	Club	Official page
Laker	Los Angeles Lakers	nba.com
Rocket	Houston Rockets	nba.com
Sun	Phoenix Suns	nba.com
Warrior	Golden State Warriors	nba.com

Which New York State teams are in green?

Two Buffalo clubs, one New York City team and one university make the group.

Tile	Team	League	Official page
Bills	Buffalo Bills	NFL	buffalobills.com
Sabres	Buffalo Sabres	National Hockey League (NHL)	nhl.com/sabres
Liberty	New York Liberty	Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA)	liberty.wnba.com
Orange	Syracuse University teams	College	cuse.com

Who are the four Premier League managers?

The Premier League’s own list of managers for the 2026/27 season, published Aug. 5, 2026, names all four.

Tile	Manager	Club
Emery	Unai Emery	Aston Villa, since October 2022
Moyes	David Moyes	Everton, second spell since January 2025
Rose	Marco Rose	Bournemouth, new for 2026/27
Lampard	Frank Lampard	Coventry City, promoted under him

Rose is an easy tile to park in the wrong spot. It reads like a garden word, and with Sun and Snow nearby a nature group looks tempting. Lampard and Moyes are the easy entry points for anyone who follows English soccer.

What do the purple tiles complete?

Put board after each one: skateboard, snowboard, surfboard and wakeboard. Sun is the tile that most often gets dragged into this group, since sunboard looks almost like a word, yet it belongs to Phoenix in yellow.