Looking for the regular puzzle solutions? You’re in the wrong place, mostly. This is the sports variant. Published by The Athletic but living rent-free in the NYT ecosystem, it shows up on their app, not yours. Unless you play online.
It’s a hard one today. Purple is purple, as it should be. 🥵
“The purple category requires you to find partial NHL team names hiding in plain sight.”
Here is the breakdown. Easy to hard. Or rather, Yellow to Purple.
Hints
- Yellow: MLB numbers.
- Green: Zoom!
- Blue: Gridiron legends.
- Purple: Hockey teams. But not the ones you think. Strip the first letter away.
Answers
Yellow : Baseball stats.
You get errors, hits, runs, walks. Nothing tricky. Just counting heads. Or balls.
Green : Moves fast.
Bolts. Races. Scoots. Sprints. If it lacks momentum, it’s wrong.
Blue : Hall of Fame running backs.
James. Riggins. Sanders. Sayers. The grass stains stay.
Purple : NHL teams, minus the initial letter.
This is where people break. You need to see:
1. angers (from Rangers)
2. ruins (from Bruins)
3. slanders (from Islanders)
4. tars (from Stars)
Rangers become Angers? Sure. It works. Sort of.
Other brain melters
It depends on what you actually care about. My husband crushes F1 trivia. I own Minnesota sports knowledge. Others own nothing.
But these three hurt everyone:
- Serie A Clubs: Atalanta, Juventus, Lazio, Rome. (Note: It’s Roma in football speak, not the ancient city tour trap, though both are right here).
- WNBA MVPs: Catchings, Delle Donne, Stokes, Stewart.
- Premier League nicknames: Bees, Cherries, FoxES, Hammers.
Some days you know every answer. Other days you stare at the screen.
Waiting for the letters to align. They usually don’t. 🧊
