NYT Connections: Sports Edition Hints and Answers for Thursday, Oct. 29, 2026 (#766)

Thursday’s Connections: Sports Edition from The Athletic and New York Times (NYT) Games is puzzle #766, for Oct. 29, 2026, and all 16 of its tiles are abbreviations. Hints for each group come first, then the answers in a spoiler section.

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

When every tile is a short abbreviation, sorting by sport stops working, because the same letters can fit more than one game. Start with the tile that has only one obvious home, then work outward. Thursday’s board has four sports in play, and a few tiles look like they belong to a different one than they do.

Thursday’s hints, #766, Oct. 29, 2026

Thursday’s 16 tiles run from one to five characters. Only one of them has a number in it.

• Yellow: Four colleges, each shortened to its initials, that play in the same football conference.
• Green: Quarterback (QB) numbers from a box score, each written in its short form.
• Blue: Four basketball stars known by short nicknames made from their names. One of them is a movie rating.
• Purple: Spots on the ice, each written as a single letter or two.

Watch for the overlap: C and G look like basketball positions, but they sit with the ice spots. TD looks like a stand-alone football score, but here it sits with the other passing numbers.

More of Thursday’s puzzles: Connections hints, Spelling Bee hints, LinkedIn games answers and Pips hints. The newest earlier Sports Edition page is still up: Connections: Sports Edition #763. Keep a streak log on our printable weekly calendar.

Thursday’s answers, #766, Oct. 29, 2026 (spoilers)

The 16 tiles, spelled out: Louisiana State University (LSU), Oklahoma (OU), Georgia (UGA) and Kentucky (UK) from the Southeastern Conference (SEC); interception (INT), quarterback rating (QBR), touchdown (TD) and yards (YDS); Anthony Davis (AD), Kevin Durant (KD), Paul George (PG-13) and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (SGA) from the National Basketball Association (NBA); and center (C), goalie (G), left wing (LW) and right wing (RW).

• Yellow, SEC Schools, Abbreviated: LSU, OU, UGA, UK
• Green, QB Stats, Abbreviated: INT, QBR, TD, YDS
• Blue, Nicknames of NBA Stars: AD, KD, PG-13, SGA
• Purple, Hockey Positions, Abbreviated: C, G, LW, RW

Why Thursday’s traps worked

C and G read as center and guard in basketball, which is why they tempt a player toward the blue group, but here they are hockey positions with LW and RW. TD fits football clearly. It belongs with the quarterback stats, not on its own.

Beebom and Mashable, whose solution a local news site republished, list the same four groups. Puzzle #767 arrives at midnight.