The Thursday edition of NYT Connections Sports Edition arrives with puzzle #724, serving up a grid that moves through competition structure, international history, college athletics, and a sharp naming trick.
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 #724:
PARIS | TOKYO | DRAKE | LONDON
LITTLE | CONFERENCE | BELMONT | GROUP
BRADLEY | NEW YORK | RIO DE JANEIRO | SAN FRANCISCO
LEAGUE | NORTHERN IOWA | DIVISION | YOMIURI
A seemingly random collection that somehow connects into four perfect categories.
Strategic Hints (No Spoilers Yet)
Yellow Category Nudge: Look for terms that describe how a sport organizes its participants.
Green Category Clue: A world map and recent event history matter more than rules or equipment.
Blue Category Hint: Stay in college athletics, and think about an institutional tie rather than mascots or nicknames.
Purple Category Teaser: Read each entry as something that can stand before the same sports-related noun.
The Full Solutions
Last chance to solve independently: answers below
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Yellow (A Collection Of Teams): CONFERENCE, DIVISION, GROUP, LEAGUE
CONFERENCE, LEAGUE, DIVISION, and GROUP are all labels for a collection of teams.
CONFERENCE is the strongest red herring because DRAKE, BELMONT, BRADLEY, and NORTHERN IOWA all belong to the Missouri Valley Conference.
Green (Last Four Summer Olympics Hosts): LONDON, PARIS, RIO DE JANEIRO, TOKYO
PARIS, TOKYO, RIO DE JANEIRO, and LONDON hosted the four most recent Summer Olympics, in 2024, 2020, 2016, and 2012 respectively.
NEW YORK and SAN FRANCISCO create the geographic decoy, but their real assignment comes from a shared team name.
Blue (Missouri Valley Schools): BELMONT, BRADLEY, DRAKE, NORTHERN IOWA
DRAKE, BELMONT, BRADLEY, and NORTHERN IOWA are Missouri Valley Conference schools.
BELMONT carries a horse-racing association, while DRAKE and BRADLEY readily read as surnames, giving this set useful surface-level misdirection.
Purple (_____ Giants): LITTLE, NEW YORK, SAN FRANCISCO, YOMIURI
LITTLE, NEW YORK, SAN FRANCISCO, and YOMIURI each precede GIANTS. Little Giants is the youth-football film title, while the others identify NFL, MLB, and Japanese baseball clubs.
The trick works because the completed phrases cross multiple sporting contexts instead of forming one tidy league or location set.
The Verdict
Yellow should fall first because its four organizational labels share a clean, direct relationship.
The real trap sits among the place names, where NEW YORK and SAN FRANCISCO can drift toward PARIS, TOKYO, RIO DE JANEIRO, and LONDON before the Olympics sequence becomes clear.
Purple is the streak-deciding set because its shared ending crosses football, baseball, Japanese baseball, and a youth-football movie title.
Reset and Repeat
Today’s shared-ending trick rewards a clean reset after the city-name misdirection. Come back tomorrow ready to test every familiar name in more than one sporting context.
For now, puzzle #724 is solved. See you at midnight for the next round.
