Today’s NYT Connections: Sports Edition Hints and Answers for September 11

Today’s NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle #353 has been released for Thursday, September 11, 2025. This version of the popular word game focuses on sports themes and comes from The Athletic, owned by The New York Times. Fans who enjoy the main Connections puzzle will find this sports-only edition both challenging and fun.

The puzzle is divided into four color-coded groups. Each group has a hidden theme, and solvers must figure out the connection. Today’s puzzle included a mix of gymnastics, fitness, football, and a clever twist involving basketball.

NYT Connections: Sports Edition Hints Explained

The puzzle gives four broad hints. These hints help solvers connect the words into the right categories. According to The Athletic, here are the official clues:

Yellow group hint: Nadia or Olga.

Green group hint: Hit the gym.

Blue group hint: College football’s best player.

Purple group hint: Hoops teams, but mixed up.

Each hint points to a category of sports-related words. For example, Nadia and Olga are tied to Olympic gymnastics, while “Hit the gym” leads to common exercises. The purple group is often the hardest, and today it involved anagrams of NBA teams.

Answers for Today’s Connections: Sports Edition

Here are the full answers for puzzle #353:

Yellow group – Gymnastics apparatus: bars, beam, floor, vault.

Green group – Exercises: burpee, crunch, lunge, squat.

Blue group – Heisman Trophy winners: Burrow, Bush, Crouch, Tebow.

Purple group – Anagrams of NBA teams: parrots (Raptors), recaps (Pacers), sent (Nets), shorten (Hornets).

Each set challenges players to think differently. The gymnastics set is straightforward, while the NBA anagram group required strong pattern recognition.

Why This Puzzle Matters

Sports fans enjoy this edition because it blends trivia with wordplay. It highlights names, movements, and traditions from different sports. According to reporting from major outlets like Reuters, word-based games are seeing strong engagement worldwide. Adding a sports edition helps reach a wider audience.

The inclusion of anagram-based categories keeps the challenge fresh. Even players with strong sports knowledge may stumble without sharp puzzle-solving skills. This mix of skill types is what makes the game stand out.

Today’s NYT Connections: Sports Edition hints give players a way to learn and enjoy at the same time. The Athletic has turned this puzzle into a fun daily habit for sports lovers.

Bold closing: If you are looking for a quick daily challenge, today’s Connections: Sports Edition puzzle brings together fun sports trivia and clever wordplay in one neat package.

FYI (keeping you in the loop)-

Q1: What is the NYT Connections: Sports Edition?

It is a daily puzzle from The Athletic that focuses only on sports. It works like the main Connections game but uses sports themes.

Q2: What were the yellow group answers today?

The yellow group was gymnastics apparatus: bars, beam, floor, vault.

Q3: Which players were in the blue group?

The blue group had Heisman Trophy winners: Burrow, Bush, Crouch, and Tebow.

Q4: What made the purple group tricky today?

The purple group used anagrams of NBA teams. Words like parrots and shorten had to be unscrambled to find Raptors and Hornets.

Q5: Where can people play the Sports Edition?

It is available in The Athletic app and also online. It does not appear in the NYT Games app yet.