Updated

Updated · The New York Times · Aug 9

Connections: Sports Edition Releases Puzzle No. 685 Answers, Rating August 9 Game 1.5 of 5

Updated

Updated · The New York Times · Aug 9

Connections: Sports Edition Releases Puzzle No. 685 Answers, Rating August 9 Game 1.5 of 5

Q: Why did today's sports word puzzle secretly rely on deep baseball history to stump daily players?

It relied on baseball history because the trickiest category was not general sports vocabulary but a set of surnames tied to past American League Cy Young winners: **Blue, Cole, Colón and Viola**. To solve that group, players had to recognize **Vida Blue, Gerrit Cole, Bartolo Colón and Frank Viola**—a mix spanning decades of MLB history. That made the puzzle harder than it looked. Words like **FIRST PITCH** and **KICKOFF** were easy to sort as game starters, and **LITTLE, LEAGUE, WORLD, SERIES** clearly formed **Little League World Series**. But **Blue**, **Colón** and **Viola** do not read immediately as baseball clues unless a player knows award history, especially older names such as Blue and Viola. The puzzle also used baseball as a double misdirection. **FIRST PITCH** looked baseball-related but belonged in “Ways a game begins,” while the Cy Young set required knowledge of pitchers rather than gameplay terms. That is why the category could quietly stump daily players: it tested not just sports awareness, but memory of who won one of baseball’s oldest pitching honors, an award that has existed since **1956** and has been split by league since **1967**. In short, today’s board hid one of its hardest connections inside MLB’s historical record, rewarding players who knew more than just current baseball headlines.

Q: How does the creator of this daily sports brainteaser use nostalgic childhood tournaments to cleverly mislead fans?

He does it by turning a warm childhood memory into a deceptive word cluster. In Puzzle No. 684, Mark Cooper used **LITTLE, LEAGUE, WORLD,** and **SERIES** as the green category, which together form **LLWS — Little League World Series**, the long-running youth tournament in South Williamsport that many fans recognize from childhood summers. The misdirection works because those words are so broadly baseball-coded that players can easily mis-group them. **WORLD** and **SERIES** instantly suggest Major League Baseball’s World Series, while **LEAGUE** can seem to fit almost any baseball theme. On a board that also included **FIRST PITCH** and four Cy Young winner surnames, the nostalgia of Little League nudges solvers toward a generic baseball bucket rather than the precise youth-tournament acronym. That is the clever part of the construction: Cooper uses familiar, emotionally resonant sports language not as a giveaway, but as camouflage. The Little League World Series category feels obvious only after the solve; before that, it competes with more adult baseball associations and creates exactly the kind of false trail that defines a strong Connections puzzle.

Q: Which legendary pitcher hidden in today's puzzle fell victim to the notorious trend of being traded after winning?

Frank Viola. In today’s puzzle, the AL Cy Young winners category included BLUE, COLE, COLÓN and VIOLA. Of those names, the searched background specifically identifies Viola as a reigning Cy Young winner who was traded soon after winning. Minnesota dealt Viola to the Mets in 1989, after his 1988 AL Cy Young season. That makes Viola the “legendary pitcher” in the grid who fits the notorious pattern of being traded after a Cy Young-winning year.

3 articles · Updated · The New York Times · Aug 9

Puzzle No. 685’s full answers were published for Aug. 9, with the game rated an easier 1.5 out of 5.
Four categories solved the 16-word board: equipment that comes in pairs, injuries, Fenway Park sights, and Premier League venues.
Hint words previewing each group were ICE SKATE, TURF TOE, LANSDOWNE STREET, and City Ground.
The Athletic’s daily game, created by managing editor Mark Cooper, asks players to sort 16 sports terms into four groups of four before the next puzzle drops at midnight local time.