The New York Times keeps expanding its puzzle empire, and honestly, Connections: Sports Edition is one of the better additions. Unlike the regular Connections that sometimes feels like it’s pulling categories out of thin air, the sports version has a rhythm to it. Today’s puzzle 512 for February 17 is a solid example of what makes this game tick.
If you’re here, you’re probably stuck or just want to check your work before committing. No judgment either way. The puzzle lives on The Athletic’s platform, not the main NYT Games app, which still feels like an odd decision for something owned by The Times. But that’s technology companies for you, keeping things siloed when they don’t need to be.
The Easy Entry Point
Let’s start with yellow, which is always meant to be the gimme category. Today’s theme is summer Olympic sports, and you’re looking at fencing, golf, judo, and rugby. Pretty straightforward if you’ve watched any Olympics coverage in the past decade. Golf is the newest addition to that list, coming back in 2016 after a century-long absence, which is wild when you think about it.
The thing about this category is that it requires just enough general sports knowledge without being obnoxiously obscure. You don’t need to know the ins and outs of each sport, just that they exist in the summer games.
When Geography Meets Sports
Green takes us to DC schools: American, George Washington, Georgetown, and Howard. This is where Connections: Sports Edition separates itself from regular word games. You need to know these aren’t just universities, they’re Division I athletic programs with real weight in college sports.
Georgetown especially carries name recognition thanks to their basketball program. The Hoyas have been a March Madness staple for decades. Howard’s been making noise recently too, particularly after their upset over Harvard that broke the internet a few years back.
The Name Game
Blue gets personal with Pauls in sports. We’ve got Coffey, George, Molitor, and Skenes. This is where puzzle 512 gets interesting because the difficulty jump is real. Paul Skenes is the fresh name here, the Pirates pitcher who’s been tearing through the league. Paul Molitor is a Hall of Famer, Paul George is still balling in the NBA, and Paul Coffey dominated hockey back in the day.
The generational spread here is clever. It forces you to know current athletes and legends, which isn’t always easy when sports media focuses so heavily on what happened yesterday.
The Purple Puzzle
Purple always brings the weird energy, and today doesn’t disappoint with its “__ league” theme. You’ve got cactus, G, grapefruit, and little. Cactus League and Grapefruit League are baseball’s spring training divisions in Arizona and Florida respectively. G League is the NBA’s developmental system, and Little League needs no introduction.
This category works because it takes familiar terms and strips them down to their core components. Without the word “league” attached, these words seem random as hell. That’s peak Connections design right there.
The Sports Edition version consistently delivers a better experience than its parent game because it has focus. You know you’re diving into sports trivia and cultural knowledge, so the mental framework is already there. Regular Connections can feel like it’s testing whether you can read the puzzle maker’s mind, which gets old fast. When The Athletic rolled this out of beta, it felt like they actually understood what made the format work instead of just copying homework.
