Connections Sports Edition #762 Answers, October 25, 2026

Sunday’s Connections: Sports Edition from The Athletic and New York Times (NYT) Games is puzzle #762, for Oct. 25, 2026, and it runs from hockey nicknames to Canadian stars, with two hints for each group below. The full answers follow in a spoiler section, then Saturday’s #761 with an explanation of its overlaps.

How the Sports Edition works

It is the sports version of Connections, built by The Athletic with New York Times Games. You sort 16 sports terms into four groups of four and can make four mistakes. Yellow is usually the easiest group, purple the trickiest. It launched on Feb. 9, 2025, with a football puzzle, and new puzzles post at midnight local time, according to The Athletic’s announcement.

Solving tips

Sports Edition groups lean on three kinds of links: a player’s career (teams, colleges), places (stadiums, schools, cities) and fill-in-the-blank names such as “Dallas ___”. When a city name shows up on the board, check whether it can also start a team or player name; Saturday’s Dallas sat in one group while three other Dallas names filled another. Find the tightest group first, then use the leftovers.

More of Sunday’s puzzles: Connections hints, Spelling Bee hints and Pips hints. For the games themselves, see the World Series 2026 schedule, and keep a streak log on our printable weekly calendar.

Sunday’s hints, #762, Oct. 25, 2026

Sunday’s 16 words: Avalanche, Char, Clip, Gala, Grizzlies, Jazz, Kraken, Lake, Mammoth, McIntosh, Mizzou, Nash, Orr, Rizzuto, Votto, Wild.

Yellow

• Hint 1: Think about hockey team names.
• Hint 2: Four National Hockey League (NHL) nicknames that are not plural.

Green

• Hint 1: Look at the spelling, not the sport.
• Hint 2: A National Basketball Association (NBA) team from Memphis, one from Utah, a college nickname from Missouri and a Yankees shortstop all share a letter pair.

Blue

• Hint 1: Check the passports.
• Hint 2: A swimmer, a point guard twice named the NBA’s top player of the season, a Boston Bruins defenseman and a Cincinnati Reds first baseman, all from one country.

Purple

• Hint 1: These are not complete words.
• Hint 2: Add a few letters to each to get a team from one big Southern California city.

Sunday’s answers, #762, Oct. 25, 2026 (spoilers)

• Yellow, NHL Teams With Singular Nicknames: Avalanche, Kraken, Mammoth, Wild
• Green, Contains a Double Z: Grizzlies, Jazz, Mizzou, Rizzuto
• Blue, Famous Canadian Athletes: McIntosh, Nash, Orr, Votto
• Purple, Starts of Los Angeles Team Names: Char, Clip, Gala, Lake

Why it is tricky. Jazz and Grizzlies look like they belong with team nicknames, but the link is the double Z they share with Mizzou and Rizzuto. Char, Clip, Gala and Lake begin the Chargers, Clippers, Galaxy and Lakers. Beebom and Mashable, whose solution a local news site republished, list the same four groups.

Saturday’s answers, #761, Oct. 24, 2026 (spoilers)

Saturday’s 16 words were Bump, Chapel Hill, Chestnut Hill, Clark, Cowboys, Dallas, Goedert, Hill, Jets, Mound, Palo Alto, Raiders, Rubber, Seahawks, Stars and West Virginia.

• Yellow, Where a Pitcher Throws From: Bump, Hill, Mound, Rubber
• Green, Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) School Locations: Chapel Hill, Chestnut Hill, Dallas, Palo Alto
• Blue, Geno Smith Teams: Jets, Raiders, Seahawks, West Virginia
• Purple, Dallas ___: Clark, Cowboys, Goedert, Stars

Why Saturday’s traps worked

Three hills. Hill is baseball slang for the mound, while Chapel Hill and Chestnut Hill are the campus towns of two ACC schools, North Carolina and Boston College.

Dallas twice. Dallas itself is an ACC location, home of Southern Methodist University, and Palo Alto is Stanford’s. The purple group was Dallas as a first word: the players Dallas Clark and Dallas Goedert, the Cowboys and the Stars.

West Virginia. It reads like a state among the school locations, but it is Geno Smith’s college team, grouped with three of his pro teams, the Jets, Seahawks and Raiders.

Two independent published solutions, from Parade and Beebom, list the same four groups. Puzzle #762 arrives at midnight.