The purple group. It was supposed to be the hard part, right? Well, it was. The June 4 edition of NYT Connections: Sports Edition (#619) had people stuck. Really stuck. You look at a list of sports terms and player names, your brain goes one way, and the actual answer is sitting there looking like nonsense.
Here’s the thing though. You probably didn’t find this puzzle in the standard New York Times app. You can’t play it there. The Athletic publishes it. Owned by The Times, yes, but a different beast entirely. It’s live in The Athletic’s app or right here online if you prefer free entry. And if you just emerged from Beta? Congrats, you’re still figuring out how these things work.
Let’s break it down. No spoilers unless you scroll, but we will get there.
The Clues Were Misleading
Yellow. The easy one? “Going to the game.”
Green. Beach stuff? “Game often played on the beach.”
Blue. England is winning? “It’s coming home!”
Purple. Hoops. “Dunk that ball.”
Simple. Clear. Wrong. At least in how your brain interprets them. The hints are ranked by difficulty, which feels like a lie when the hardest hint is literally telling you about basketball dunks but the answer is nothing like a dunk.
What Actually Fit Where
Yellow is boring. It’s what you see when you try to get inside. Metal detector. Ticket scanner. Turnstile. Will call. You’ve walked past all four. Nobody trips on this one.
Green gets specific. Volleyball. Not general “sports,” but stats. Block. Dig. Kill. Service ace. If you play the sport, obvious. If not, “kill” and “dig” sound like combat terms.
Blue is names. Just surnames, mostly. Members of that England World Cup squad. (Dan) Burn. (Harry) Kane. (Kobbie) Mainoo. (John) Stones. The hint “It’s coming home” does a lot of heavy lifting here.
Then. Purple. The trap.
The hint says “Dunk that ball.” Your eyes see “base runner” and “Rimington” and your brain wants to connect them to scoring or maybe obscure basketball refs. You don’t. You stop. Look at the letters.
Base runner. Starts with BASE. A part of a hoop.
Glass houses. Starts with GLASS. Backboards.
Netminder. Starts with NET.
Rimington. Starts with RIM.
It’s a linguistic trick. Not a basketball trick. Starts with part of a basket[ball hoop.
Stop Doing That One Thing
There are three rules you’re probably breaking right now.
- Don’t rush the easy group. Grabbing the first thing that fits usually locks a wrong word into place and blocks the real solution. Think wider. Football? Baseball? Slang?
- Names are words. Words are names. The puzzle loves to weaponize ambiguity. “HURTS” looks like a verb. It’s also an NFL running back’s last name. Don’t get cute with it.
- Check for double meanings. Last names. College mascots. Things that mean other things. It’s all fair game.
Is it fair? Maybe. Is it frustrating? Yes. That’s the game. 🏀
