Today's Strands Sports Edition is live for Saturday, October 24, 2026 (Puzzle #4). Stuck on today's Strands Sports Edition? We've got progressive hints, from gentle nudges to full solutions, so you can solve at your own pace.
How Strands Sports Edition Works (New Players Start Here)
Strands Sports Edition is the free daily sports word search from The Athletic and NYT Games. It hides sports-themed words inside a 6x8 letter grid. Your mission: find every word connected to the day's theme. Letters link in any direction (horizontal, vertical, diagonal) and words can twist and turn. Every letter gets used exactly once.
The spangram is the key word or phrase that captures the theme and stretches across the entire board, touching two opposite sides.
Need a boost? Every three non-theme words you find (four letters or longer) earn a hint that highlights the letters of a theme word. A new puzzle arrives every day at midnight local time.
Theme Decoder
Today's Theme Prompt: "Team players"
What It Really Means
Think across professional team sports, including baseball, basketball, and soccer. You're hunting for sports terms, rather than athletes or team names.
Think About...
- Baseball beyond the batter's box.
- Basketball beyond the court.
- Soccer beyond the touchline.
Spangram Clues
Orientation: Left to right across the board
Letter Count: 11 letters
Starting Zone: Row 5, letter 1
Progressive Spangram Hints
Hint 1 (Gentle): Think about decisions made away from the field.
Hint 2 (Warmer): Look for an umbrella phrase covering changes to a team's personnel and their eligibility to play.
Hint 3 (Almost There): First letter is R, last letter is S
---
---
---
---
---
ROSTERMOVES
Word-by-Word Hints
Solve as many as you can before peeking. Each word includes escalating clues.
Word 1
Vague: A club takes a formal step toward letting a player go.
Closer: In pro basketball, this exposes a departing player to claims from other clubs before free agency.
Letter Clue: Starts with W, 5 letters total
Answer
WAIVE
Word 2
Vague: Clubs exchange personnel.
Closer: In the NBA, clubs can exchange players and future picks through this transaction.
Letter Clue: Starts with T, 5 letters total
Answer
TRADE
Word 3
Vague: A player makes a contractual commitment to a club.
Closer: A free agent does this by putting pen to paper on a contract.
Letter Clue: Starts with S, 4 letters total
Answer
SIGN
Word 4
Vague: A baseball club sends a player down a level.
Closer: In baseball, this sends an eligible player to the minor leagues while keeping them on the major league club's reserve roster.
Letter Clue: Starts with O, 6 letters total
Answer
OPTION
Word 5
Vague: A club makes a player eligible to return to action.
Closer: A baseball club does this when bringing a player back from the injured list.
Letter Clue: Starts with A, 8 letters total
Answer
ACTIVATE
Word 6
Vague: A team chooses an incoming prospect.
Closer: In the NFL, clubs take turns choosing eligible college prospects through this process.
Letter Clue: Starts with D, 5 letters total
Answer
DRAFT
Word 7
Vague: A player joins another club temporarily.
Closer: In soccer, a player spends a temporary spell at another club while remaining under contract with the parent club.
Letter Clue: Starts with L, 4 letters total
Answer
LOAN
Full Answers
Spangram: ROSTERMOVES
Theme Words:
- WAIVE
- TRADE
- SIGN
- OPTION
- ACTIVATE
- DRAFT
- LOAN
Puzzle Debrief
Difficulty Rating: Medium, with a vocabulary shift between baseball administration and soccer terminology.
Trickiest Word: OPTION is the likeliest sticking point because its baseball meaning is more specialized than its everyday sense of a choice.
Our Take: “Team players” makes a neat pivot from the athletes to the people managing them, and ROSTERMOVES ties that reading together. OPTION and LOAN give the list its cross-sport range, making familiarity with more than one league useful.