Today's NYT Connections: Sports Edition Hints, Answers for June 9 #259
Looking for the most recent regular Connections answers? Click here for today's Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle and Strands puzzles.
Atlantans, today's Connections: Sports Edition should be easy for you -- or at least the green group. Read on for hints and the answers.
Connections: Sports Edition is out of beta now, making its debut on Super Bowl Sunday, Feb. 9. That's a sign that the game has earned enough loyal players that The Athletic, the subscription-based sports journalism site owned by the Times, will continue to publish it. It doesn't show up in the NYT Games app but now appears in The Athletic's own app. Or you can continue to play it free online.
Read more: NYT Connections: Sports Edition Puzzle Comes Out of Beta
Hints for today's Connections: Sports Edition groups
Here are four hints for the groupings in today's Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.
Yellow group hint: Woo-hoo!
Green group hint: Georgia's capital city.
Blue group hint: Billie Jean King.
Purple group hint: Little kids learn to draw these.
Answers for today's Connections: Sports Edition groups
Yellow group: Lively.
Green group: An Atlanta athlete, past or present.
Blue group: Names of women's tennis players.
Purple group: Can be preceded by "line."
Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words
What are today's Connections: Sports Edition answers?
The completed NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle for June 9, 2025.
NYT/Screenshot by CNET
The yellow words in today's Connections
The theme is lively. The four answers are animated, energetic, excited and spirited.
The green words in today's Connections
The theme is an Atlanta athlete, past or present. The four answers are Brave, Falcon, Hawk and Thrasher.
The blue words in today's Connections
The theme is names of women's tennis players. The four answers are Coco, Iga, Madison and Mirra.
The purple words in today's Connections
The theme is can be preceded by "line." The four answers are backer, man, score and up.
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USA Today
36 minutes ago
- USA Today
Eagles biggest reason for optimism shouldn't come as a surprise
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Buzz Feed
41 minutes ago
- Buzz Feed
I Won Miss America — But Never Imagined That Addiction Would Follow
This article originally appeared on HuffPost in January 2025. When I was 16 years old, I competed in my first pageant in the Miss America Organization because of a friend who asked me to compete with her. I won. The very first minute I stepped onto that stage, I felt a burst of adrenaline. When I felt the crown placed upon my head, I felt alive. I was immediately hooked. I grew up at a time when they didn't give participation trophies to everyone. There was only one girl, one winner, one crown. And I so desperately wanted to be that (almost always white) ideal. I looked up to her, I respected her, and I envied her 'all-American' look. She was everything I wasn't. Still, the branding of Miss America was built on 'the girl next door.' And that was the shiny allure — that any girl in America could get there. Winning a beauty pageant is like a high — the ultimate validation in a world where I otherwise felt othered. Every pageant win after the first was like a fresh hit. But, the thing about highs is that there are extremely worse lows — like losing. And when I say losing, I mean being awarded first runner-up. You might be thinking, 'Cry me a river,' right? But I'd gotten to a place where not winning felt like the worst hangover multiplied by a million. To add insult to injury, I felt vulnerable and exposed. You know what you need to do to survive when you have a hangover? Order a greasy burger and iced coffee ASAP. Imagine that when it arrives, you tear through the packaging like the feral shell of a human you are, and when your little hunger gremlins are just about to rejoice, you see…a salad. Not a juicy burger. You got a wilted salad when you thought you deserved — no, wait, needed — that greasy burger. Realizing that your order got mixed up, you picture some rando chomping away at your burger. And it's painful. Being first runner-up feels like that. 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On Sept. 15, 2013, with 12 million people watching, I stood on the pageant stage and heard my name called as 'Your new Miss America!' I thought I had made it. I was 24 years old, living in the supposed prime of my beauty and reveling in the upside of fame — chatting with Barack Obama in the Oval Office, hanging in a Super Bowl suite with Steven Tyler, and getting flown all across America to take pictures and sign autographs. Sounds fun, right? But after the initial high wore off, the harsh reality of the job set in. Instead of feeling like a queen, wearing my crown to appearances after the pageant made me feel like I was an animal at the zoo. I hated the feeling of eyes on me, judging my every move, action, word and gesture. Not to mention the superficial comments on my hair, makeup, nails, toes, skin color, and body — to the point where one event organizer called the Miss America office to report my underarms weren't cleanly shaven. What in the actual fuck? I hated having to be gracious when an old Indian uncle came up to me and said 'So, Miss America, can you cook?' reducing my image to a trad-wife. The struggle of balancing Indian culture while growing up in America has been and will continue to be the most challenging thing I navigate in my lifetime. On top of having to live up to the model minority myth, women also have the outsized pressure of having to 'do it all': be exceptionally beautiful to Eurocentric standards, win Miss America, get into medical school, be a chef in the kitchen, have kids, get your body back immediately after, and maintain a happy household. We're trained to worry about 'what will everyone else think?' and the deadly combination means that inevitably, the insecurities will rise to the surface. At one point, I ran out of pageants to win. And like any addiction, I craved a bigger and better high to get that original feeling. If winning Miss America and getting paid to walk around with a crown on your head isn't enough validation, are we all just destined to feel like we will never be enough? Demi Moore couldn't have said it better herself Sunday night with her Golden Globe acceptance speech. My job was quite literally to entertain. To be everything to everyone. Because of this pressure to be perfect, I started to feel anxious and insecure when I would go to events. I know that I will never be everyone's cup of tea. But in trying to be, I turned to alcohol for answers. I told myself that a little 'personality cocktail' would do the trick. Just something to get me through the night. I got through that year, but after giving up my title, I had to learn how to navigate something that was new to all of us: social media. From 2014 to 2017, during the rise of the influencer era as we now know it today, it almost didn't matter if I was Miss America. 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After freeing myself of the shackling notion women in my community all grew up with ('What will everyone else think?'), I've been able to find the truth of what makes me, me. This isn't a story about 'pretty little princess living happily ever after.' That's far from the truth, and the more people buy into this illusion — or the more I play into it — the more it does a disservice to all of us. I know I'm not alone: Some of us build the illusion that everything's perfect and we're eager to be accepted — revered even — by others. So much so, that we start to actually believe that the illusion is real. But eventually, illusions fade, crowns tarnish and followers unfollow. It's like we're all on a hamster wheel, and because no one has the courage to say 'enough,' we all just keep running forward while emotionally hyperventilating. So, for the first time publicly, this is my jumping-off moment. I hope others will join me. We all have messy parts, so why can't we openly talk about it? I've come to the conclusion that maybe it just takes one person jumping off the hamster wheel first. Because my life has been pretty messy, and so is everyone else's. And being vocal about those messy parts out loud is better than any high I could have imagined.
Fox News
41 minutes ago
- Fox News
Ted Danson admits he's 'nauseatingly in love' with wife Mary Steenburgen as couple reunites on screen
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