April 20, 2026 NYT Connections Sports Edition #574 Hints and Answers

Today’s Connections: Sports Edition puzzle #574 leaned heavily on abbreviations and initials — A’s, B’s, and C’s all showed up in the grid, making it visually unusual and conceptually tricky. If you’re trying to figure out which letters belong where, you’re in the right place. Hints come first, answers follow at the bottom.

What Is NYT Connections: Sports Edition?

Connections: Sports Edition is a daily word puzzle published by The Athletic, the sports journalism platform owned by The New York Times. It follows the same format as the standard NYT Connections game but focuses exclusively on sports topics — teams, athletes, events, and terminology.

Each puzzle presents 16 words or phrases. Your job is to sort them into four groups of four, each sharing a hidden sports-related theme. The game is available for free online and also through The Athletic’s app.

How to Play

You are given 16 clues arranged in a 4×4 grid.
Group them into four categories of four items each.
Each category has a color that reflects its difficulty: yellow (easiest), green (medium), blue (hard), and purple (trickiest).
You have four attempts before the game ends. One wrong guess costs you a try.

Category Hints for April 20 — #574

Here are vague hints for each group, ranked from easiest to hardest. No answers yet — just enough to point you in the right direction.

🟨 Yellow group hint: Think about baseball on the West Coast, specifically teams from the Golden State.

🟩 Green group hint: Boston fans know these — but you won’t need the full name. Shortened versions only.

🟦 Blue group hint: A moment in sports history so stunning, people still ask: do you believe in miracles?

🟪 Purple group hint: These are cities where elite runners come to test themselves on the world’s biggest marathon stages.

Category Names for April 20 — #574

Still not sure? Here are the official category names, which narrow things down a bit more without giving away the words themselves.

🟨 YELLOW: CALIFORNIA BASEBALL TEAMS

🟩 GREEN: SHORTENED NICKNAMES FOR BOSTON TEAMS

🟦 BLUE: ASSOCIATED WITH THE MIRACLE ON ICE

🟪 PURPLE: WORLD MARATHON MAJORS

Full Answers for April 20 — #574

Ready for the complete solutions? Here they are:

🟨 CALIFORNIA BASEBALL TEAMS A’s, Angels, Giants, Padres

All four are Major League Baseball franchises based in California. The Oakland A’s, Los Angeles Angels, San Francisco Giants, and San Diego Padres represent the state’s rich baseball history across the AL and NL.

🟩 SHORTENED NICKNAMES FOR BOSTON TEAMS B’s, C’s, Pats, Sox

Boston sports fans rarely use full team names. The Bruins become the B’s, the Celtics the C’s, the Patriots the Pats, and the Red Sox simply the Sox. Today’s grid featured A’s, B’s, and C’s side by side, which likely caused confusion for anyone scanning without the full context.

🟦 ASSOCIATED WITH THE MIRACLE ON ICE 1980, Brooks, hockey, Lake Placid

This category references one of the most celebrated upsets in sports history — the 1980 Winter Olympics, held in Lake Placid, New York, where the U.S. men’s hockey team, coached by Herb Brooks, defeated the heavily favored Soviet Union. The moment became known as the Miracle on Ice.

🟪 WORLD MARATHON MAJORS Berlin, Boston, Chicago, Tokyo

The Abbott World Marathon Majors is a series of six elite annual marathons. Four of them appeared in today’s purple group: Berlin, Boston, Chicago, and Tokyo. (London and New York are the other two.) These races draw tens of thousands of runners and the fastest times in the sport.

What Made Today’s Puzzle Tricky

The single biggest source of confusion today was the A’s, B’s, and C’s appearing together in the grid. A’s belongs to California baseball teams. B’s and C’s both go with shortened Boston team nicknames. Meanwhile, Boston itself is a world marathon major — not a sports team in this context. That crossover between Boston (the city) and Boston (the sports teams) was a genuine misdirection. Players who spotted “Boston” and immediately thought Red Sox or Celtics would have struggled to place it correctly.

The Miracle on Ice category was also more knowledge-dependent than usual. Players who didn’t immediately connect Brooks to Herb Brooks, or Lake Placid to the 1980 Olympics, may have burned a guess or two before locking it in.

Tips for Solving Today’s Puzzle

Don’t anchor on surface meaning. “Boston” here is a city, not a team. Watch for words that could belong to multiple categories.
Sort abbreviations carefully. A’s, B’s, and C’s all look similar at a glance. Confirm which sport each belongs to before committing.
The purple group is usually the most abstract. “World marathon majors” requires specific knowledge of global races — if geography clues seem random, think about running events.
Start with what you’re most confident about. The yellow California baseball group is the most straightforward here if you know your MLB franchises. Lock that in first to clear the board.

More Daily Puzzle Help

Looking for hints and answers from recent Connections: Sports Edition puzzles? Check these out:

Need help with other puzzles today? Try these:

Shahid Maqsood

Shahid Maqsood is a digital entrepreneur and SEO specialist focused on building engaging web experiences. He is the creator of DotWordle, combining creativity with smart, user-friendly design.