The Friday edition of NYT Connections Sports Edition arrives with puzzle #718, serving up a grid that moves from sideline status language to the basepaths, then into professional basketball and above-the-rim wordplay.
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 #718:
REVERSE | WALK | NIKE | SLAM
WILSON | PROBABLE | WINDMILL | DOUBTFUL
SINGLE | OUT | GRAY | HIT BY PITCH
QUESTIONABLE | ERROR | YOUNG | LOYD
A seemingly random collection that somehow connects into four perfect categories.
Strategic Hints (No Spoilers Yet)
Yellow Category Nudge: Think about the short labels used when reporting an athlete's availability for game day.
Green Category Clue: Focus on what can happen during a plate appearance, and track where the batter finishes.
Blue Category Hint: Read a few entries as surnames, then search for their shared professional basketball home.
Purple Category Teaser: Treat the remaining entries as modifiers for the same piece of basketball vocabulary.
The Full Solutions
Last chance to solve independently: answers below
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Yellow (Nfl Injury Report Designations): DOUBTFUL, OUT, PROBABLE, QUESTIONABLE
PROBABLE, QUESTIONABLE, DOUBTFUL, and OUT are NFL injury report designations, forming a clear scale of player availability.
OUT is the deliberate baseball lure because it sits beside several diamond-related entries, but it does not describe a route onto first base.
Green (Ways To Reach First Base): ERROR, HIT BY PITCH, SINGLE, WALK
SINGLE, WALK, HIT BY PITCH, and ERROR are ways a batter can reach first base.
The surrounding baseball language makes OUT tempting, but the destination test excludes it cleanly.
Blue (Las Vegas Aces): GRAY, LOYD, WILSON, YOUNG
GRAY, LOYD, WILSON, and YOUNG are the surnames in the LAS VEGAS ACES group.
WILSON creates the sharpest decoy because it can sit beside NIKE as a sporting-goods brand, while the correct reading is a basketball surname.
Purple (_____ Dunk): NIKE, REVERSE, SLAM, WINDMILL
NIKE, SLAM, REVERSE, and WINDMILL each open a phrase ending in DUNK: Nike Dunk, slam dunk, reverse dunk, and windmill dunk.
NIKE carries the trick because it points to the sneaker name, while the other three combinations describe basketball finishes or expressions.
The Verdict
The availability scale should fall first because its four entries reinforce one another with little ambiguity once spotted.
The real trap lives between WILSON and NIKE, whose brand connection competes with the surname group and the sneaker wordplay.
The purple set is the streak-decider because its basketball language overlaps the Aces territory, and the Nike Dunk construction is less uniform than the three action-based phrases.
Reset and Repeat
Today's best move was recognizing that NIKE belongs before DUNK rather than beside WILSON. Reset the grid tomorrow and look again for the entry doing two convincing jobs at once.
For now, puzzle #718 is solved. See you at midnight for the next round.
