published the solutions for Connections: Sports Edition puzzle No. 614 on May 30, 2026, giving players the completed grouping for that day’s 16-word board.
Puzzle No. 614’s four completed categories were straightforward in name: the playing surfaces were grass, ice, turf and wood; the Orlando group held Magic, Orlando City, Pride and UCF; the recent Champions League winners were PSG, Real Madrid, Manchester City and Chelsea; and the Arsenal cluster consisted of Eze, Rice, Saka and Timber.
The finished board therefore split the 16 words into four groups of four — the structure every Connections puzzle uses — and the published answer set lists those groupings in full so solvers who got stuck can check their work or confirm a perfect solve.
That neat list is the weight of the story: four explicit category groupings that resolve the day’s play. Players who opened the board and placed words under any of those headers will see how the four groups of four fit together and which pieces belonged together on May 30, 2026.
There is a wrinkle worth noting: each Connections puzzle has exactly one solution, but some individual words on the board may plausibly belong to more than one theme. The published answers treat the board as having a single correct arrangement, which is the standard for the game, even when a player can argue that a word’s meaning overlaps multiple categories.
Context for new or returning solvers: Connections: Sports Edition is The Athletic’s first-ever game, and its objective is simple on paper — group 16 words into four groups of four based on a shared commonality — but the single-solution rule and the allowance of only four mistakes make precision important for daily players.
One detail the answers did not provide is the color assignment used on the completed board; the published grouping names the four categories and their members but does not specify which category received which color on the finished board. That omission leaves a small open gap for players who track color placement as part of their finish-screen checklist.
What’s next: the next Connections: Sports Edition puzzle will be available at midnight in the reader’s time zone, and puzzle staffer Mark Cooper identified that the next puzzle arrives at that time. Cooper said the daily cadence remains fixed, so players who want to jump on the new board should be ready when midnight strikes.
For now, the May 30 answers close the book on puzzle No. 614: grass, ice, turf and wood; Magic, Orlando City, Pride and UCF; PSG, Real Madrid, Manchester City and Chelsea; and Eze, Rice, Saka and Timber. Players who want to replicate or challenge the color mapping will have to open the next board at midnight and see how the finished screen presents the four groups there.
