Connections Sports Edition #781 Answers, November 13, 2026

Connections: Sports Edition #781, the Friday, Nov. 13, 2026 puzzle from The Athletic and New York Times (NYT) Games, asks you to untangle a board where one group blends people with a team nickname. Two hints per color open one tap at a time. The answers wait below the spoiler heading.

The rules are on our Connections page; today’s catch is in the hints and the trap notes.

Friday’s hints, #781, Nov. 13, 2026

Read every tile twice: once as a word on its own, once as something that could trail a short opening word. Friday pays off for that habit.

• Yellow hint 1: Each tile names one slice of a contest, the kind a clock or a scoreboard counts off.
• Yellow hint 2: Two of the four are splits of the game itself, and the other two are ways of counting a stretch of play.
• Green hint 1: All four tiles trace back to one university.
• Green hint 2: A building, a nickname for a person, a city and a surname fill the set, in no particular order.
• Blue hint 1: These are words from a game thrown at a round board.
• Blue hint 2: One is the line you throw from, one is the middle of the target, one is a flawless leg and one is a nickname for a big finish.
• Purple hint 1: Each tile follows the same three-letter word to make a name.
• Purple hint 2: The set holds three people and one group of players, so not every tile is a person.

What makes Friday’s board slippery

The purple set is built to confuse. Three of its tiles read as people’s names and one reads as a team’s nickname, so a quick scan makes you hunt for a single theme where there are two kinds of thing. Slow down and ask which tiles genuinely share the same opener.

The university group adds a second snare. Any tile that looks like a place or a person can seem to be one more piece of it, and one tile from another color looks like it belongs there. Hold off on the school until you have the other three colors sorted.

Pencil your guesses on a printable weekly calendar if you keep a streak. Yesterday’s page is Connections: Sports Edition #780, and the main game has its own Connections hints and answers for Nov. 13.

Friday’s answers, #781, Nov. 13, 2026 (spoilers)

Stop here if you still want to solve it. Beebom and Nerdschalk list the same four groups and sixteen entries.

• Yellow, “Portion of a Sporting Event”: Lap, Period, Quarter, Round
• Green, “Associated With Duke”: Cameron Indoor, Coach K, Durham, Laettner
• Blue, “Darts Terms”: Big Fish, Bull’s-Eye, Nine-Darter, Oche
• Purple, “Cal ___”: Clutterbuck, Golden Bears, Raleigh, Ripken

Why the Cal group trips people up

Each purple entry completes a name that follows Cal, and that is the only link. Golden Bears is the odd one out in form, since it names a team and the others read like surnames or a place. Raleigh is the entry most likely to wander toward Durham in the green group, because the two look like a pair. The Cal opener settles it: Raleigh goes in purple.