The Saturday edition of NYT Connections Sports Edition arrives with puzzle #670, serving up a grid that spans motorsport, baseball history, women's basketball, and a sharp bit of phrase-building.
What Makes Connections Sports Edition Tick
For newcomers, NYT Connections Sports Edition presents 16 sports-themed words that must be sorted into four thematic groups of four. The twist? You're limited to four mistakes, and the color-coded difficulty system (yellow being easiest, purple being trickiest) means surface-level connections often mislead.
Connections Sports Edition brings the same addictive puzzle format to the world of athletics, featuring athletes, teams, sports terminology, and legendary moments. The game's genius lies in its red herrings, words that could fit multiple sports categories but belong in only one.
Today's Grid at a Glance
Here are the 16 words staring back at you in puzzle #670:
MONSTER | WAVE | MARINA | BAY
PERRY | A'JA | PAIGE | KIKI
FORD | RED BULL | SPAHN | FERRARI
MERCEDES | FEE | ANGEL | MCLAREN
A seemingly random collection that somehow connects into four perfect categories.
Strategic Hints (No Spoilers Yet)
Yellow Category Nudge: Shift your focus from individual drivers to the organizations competing behind them.
Green Category Clue: Think about legendary work from the pitcher's mound and the plaques it eventually earned.
Blue Category Hint: Women's basketball followers should put themselves on a first-name basis with this season's standouts.
Purple Category Teaser: Look for one missing word that can sit before four very different sports-related terms.
The Full Solutions
Last chance to solve independently: answers below
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Yellow (F1 Teams): FERRARI, MCLAREN, MERCEDES, RED BULL
RED BULL, FERRARI, MCLAREN, and MERCEDES are the four F1 teams.
FORD is the cleanest decoy because it joins Ferrari, McLaren, and Mercedes in the automotive world, while its motorsport association with Red Bull makes the overlap even more persuasive.
Green (Hall Of Fame Pitchers): FORD, PAIGE, PERRY, SPAHN
PAIGE, FORD, SPAHN, and PERRY are Hall of Fame pitchers, a compact set of baseball surnames drawn from different eras.
FORD initially looks at home beside the automotive names, which makes recognizing PAIGE, SPAHN, and PERRY as baseball surnames the key to extracting it.
Blue (2026 Wnba All-Stars, Familiarly): A'JA, ANGEL, KIKI, MARINA
ANGEL, MARINA, KIKI, and A'JA are the familiar names of 2026 WNBA All-Stars.
MARINA supplies the main distraction because it naturally clusters with BAY and WAVE as waterfront vocabulary, even though its intended role is basketball.
Purple (Green _____): BAY, FEE, MONSTER, WAVE
BAY, FEE, WAVE, and MONSTER all follow GREEN, producing Green Bay, green fee, green wave, and Green Monster.
The trick hides behind the watery trio of BAY, WAVE, and MARINA, but FEE and MONSTER expose the shared-word construction.
The Verdict
The F1 set should fall first for motorsport followers because all four team identities are unusually distinctive.
The real trap sits between FORD and the automotive entries, with MARINA, BAY, and WAVE forming a second plausible but incomplete cluster.
The GREEN blank group is the streak-decider because its four completions cross geography, golf, crowd imagery, and baseball rather than staying in one obvious lane.
Reset and Repeat
Today's best move was separating the tempting waterfront cluster and spotting GREEN as the link across four unrelated-looking terms. Reset the board tomorrow and bring the same patience for the next decoy.
For now, puzzle #670 is solved. See you at midnight for the next round.
