The New York Times published Connections: Sports Edition puzzle #749 on October 12, 2026. The daily word game, built with The Athletic, is live on web browsers and mobile devices, and players get four mistakes before the board locks them out.
Today's four categories cover a wide slice of sports trivia: DC Sports Teams, Georges, Nicknames of NFL Cornerbacks, and ___Dribble. Nothing about the release is unusual. It's the puzzle doing what it does every morning.
What's on Monday's board
The DC Sports Teams group is the easiest read of the four — CAPITALS, COMMANDERS, SPIRIT and WIZARDS. Three of those are the obvious Washington pro franchises. SPIRIT is the Washington Spirit of the NWSL, which is the one entry in that set likely to trip up players who don't follow women's soccer.
📊 Market Data Snapshot
The Georges category runs FOREMAN, GERVIN, KITTLE and SPRINGER. George Foreman is the boxing name most solvers will clock first. George Gervin is the Spurs guard, George Kittle the 49ers tight end, and George Springer the outfielder. Four athletes, one first name.
The Nicknames of NFL Cornerbacks category — KOOL-AID, PS2, SAUCE, SPOON — is the one that will separate casual fans from the people who actually watch defensive backs. These are monikers, not legal names, and the category is doing a lot of work with a small set.
Then there's ___Dribble: CROSSOVER, DOUBLE, SEAL and SPEED. The first two are basketball moves. SEAL dribble and speed dribble are real terms too, which is presumably the point.
The format hasn't changed
Connections: Sports Edition follows the same rules as the main NYT Connections puzzle. You sort sixteen words into four groups. Each group shares something — a sport, a team, a nickname, a type of move. You get four mistakes. Hit the fifth and the game ends, whether you've solved it or not.
The puzzle is a collaboration between the Times and The Athletic, which the Times owns. It runs daily. It's playable in a browser or on a phone. That's the whole product.
Why the DC category is the one to watch
The inclusion of SPIRIT alongside CAPITALS, COMMANDERS and WIZARDS is notable only in the sense that women's sports keep showing up in mainstream puzzle grids. A year or two ago, an NWSL team in a national puzzle would've been a surprise. Now it's a Tuesday.
The NFL cornerback nicknames cut the other way. KOOL-AID, PS2, SAUCE and SPOON are deep-cut references. If you know them, you know them. If you don't, you're guessing.
No market read here
There's no crypto angle to this, and anyone trying to spin one is working too hard. Sports-themed tokens sometimes catch a bid when a team or league dominates the news cycle, but a daily puzzle isn't that kind of catalyst. Bitcoin was trading around $84,103 at the time of writing, up about 1.18% over 24 hours, with low volume. That's the market story today, and it has nothing to do with a word game.
The next thing to watch is tomorrow's puzzle, #750, which drops on October 13. Same format, same four-mistake limit, new grid.
