The Athletic's Connections: Soccer Edition launched as a World Cup experiment. It worked well enough that they're keeping it going indefinitely.
The daily puzzle — built on the same bones as the New York Times' Connections and its Sports Edition spin-off — drops at midnight in your local time zone, free to play, every single day. The format is simple: group sixteen words or objects into four sets of four based on what connects them. You get three mistakes before the game shuts you out and shows you what you missed.
What the puzzle actually involves
This isn't just a test for die-hards. The categories range from the straightforward to the genuinely devious — teams making their World Cup debut, penalty-related words, players whose surnames contain food. Star individuals, tactical terminology, anagrams. The colour-coded difficulty scale runs from yellow (easy) through green and blue to purple (the ones that will make you feel stupid).
Casual fans can solve these. Experts will find themselves grinding on the purple category regardless.
- Yellow: easier groupings — broad football knowledge
- Green: moderate — requires a bit more specificity
- Blue: challenging — wordplay or obscure connections
- Purple: the category that will catch almost everyone at least once
The puzzles live on The Athletic's website and app, and are also featured in a newly launched Play Center. A range of newsletters and articles will flag each new edition as it goes live.
One thing that isn't continuing
Worth flagging: the coach articles that accompanied the World Cup coverage are finished. The puzzle carries on; the editorial companion pieces do not.
For anyone who played through the tournament and kept coming back, the daily habit just became permanent.
