
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
Eagles biggest reason for optimism shouldn't come as a surprise PFF reveals the Eagles' biggest reason for optimism, and it shouldn't catch anyone off guard. For just the fifth time in their 93-year history, the Philadelphia Eagles will enter the regular season as the defending champions. Three titles preceded the 1966 NFL/AFL merger (1948, 1949, 1960). They've added two Vince Lombardi Trophies to the shelf after winning Super Bowl 52 and 59. These young Birds fans certainly haven't gotten spoiled, haven't they? Most don't know the anguish of enduring Leonard Tose. They don't remember Bryce Paup shredding Randall Cunningham's knee. Three consecutive NFC Championship Games are foreign, and so is a depressing Fog Bowl. Young Eagles fans never had to endure seeing Reggie White leave, and you know what? The older guard ought to be thankful that they didn't. It would be cruel to wish that type of pain on anyone. This is one of the best eras of football this organization has seen, and there's still reason for more optimism. Pro Football Focus would undoubtedly agree with that last point. They recently offered a refreshing take, 'One reason for optimism for every team ahead of the 2025 NFL season'. As we know, Philadelphia has several, but it's hard to argue with the answer that PFF provided. How about a round of applause for the Eagles' loaded roster? There's plenty of content to wade through following Eagles OTAs and their single-day minicamp. Thank Dalton Wasserman for providing a nice distraction as we take a break before training camp begins in July. Philadelphia tacked an extension on the end of Saquon Barkley's current deal. Most of their young roster is locked up for the foreseeable future. They have young stars on an excellent defense. All are great reasons why Wasserman lists a 'stacked roster's return as cause for Birds fans to rest easy and smile broadly. Here's his explanation. "Philadelphia ran roughshod through the NFL last season en route to its second Super Bowl victory. This year's edition of the Eagles is poised to defend their title, returning 20 of their 25 players who led the team in snaps last season. Their defense, which paced the NFL in PFF grade last season, took most of the damage but returns stars such as Jalen Carter, Zack Baun, Quinyon Mitchell, and Cooper DeJean. The Eagles boast the best roster in the NFL heading into this season." This isn't the first time we've heard praise heaped on the Eagles' talent. The kudos are well deserved. Let's do some brief inventory. Their quarterback is the reigning Super Bowl MVP, and despite losing his first appearance in the big game, he has outplayed Patrick Mahomes on the big stage twice. Barkley is the reigning NFL Offensive Player of the Year. Philadelphia has the game's best one-two punch at wide receiver. They're also home to the game's best offensive line and a defense that is young and hungry, one led by one of the game's top defensive minds. Their owner is phenomenal. Howie Roseman is the best in the business. The fan support is otherworldly. One can certainly do a lot worse than being an Eagles fan. This season, Philadelphia tackles one of pro football's most demanding and challenging schedules, but they are armed well enough to handle the task of what will be a gauntlet. They return six Pro Bowlers (they should have had more). They return six All-Pros. Make no mistake. They'll be up to the challenge.


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. Someone else's name is called, you're shoved to the side, and you're watching some girl wear your crown. Beaten down and crushed, you pick yourself back up swearing to the universe, God, family, plants, whomever, that you're never going to do [insert substance of choice here] again. And then … you experience the withdrawal, so you end up going back for more of the same. I spent eight years of my life, from 16 to 24, competing in this very cycle of pageant after pageant. After 10 in total, I've placed as a winner, first runner-up, second runner-up, and there was a time when I got nothing. But like any good addict, I realized you must know that your relief comes in the form of a good dealer — in my case, the panel of seven judges. You have to vibe, build trust, rapport, and in desperate cases, you may have to sell your soul. I won the ultimate championship, or the 'Super Bowl' of pageants, as we call it: Miss America. The dream of a million girls. 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. My worth was suddenly defined by my number of followers — I was simply just a handle on an Excel spreadsheet. And that was a game I was not willing to play, so I opted out; but opting out of social media is almost worse than participating in it because it leads to a lot more self-doubt when you're just a viewer. You're seeing the beautiful highlight reels of everyone around you leading to more negative self-talk and feelings of FOMO. Without realizing it, eight years after I'd won Miss America, my pageant addiction crossed over to another kind. Alcohol was the only thing that kept flowing when the rhinestones felt like a distant dream and I had lost my sparkle. In 2021, I moved into my first ever 'grown-up' apartment in New York City. Over the course of my move-in day, I had finished a small pint of Absolut vodka — a couple of swigs in the morning before the movers came (because obvi, celebration!), a few during, and the rest after. Once they left, I was ready to build some furniture and jam out to Taylor Swift 's 'Welcome to New York.' I was determined to be classy as fuck in this new apartment, so I ordered a bottle of wine and double-Dashed my order with Wendy's Spicy Chicken Nuggets and a frosty (I'm a vegetarian, but when drunk all bets are off). An hour later, I was in a good place — noshing on the nugs, singing Taylor Swift, and feeling invincible with my power drill as I put together my bookshelf from West Elm. As I reached for my bottle of wine, I noticed it was a cork and not a twist off, which was a rookie mistake since I didn't have a wine opener yet. I tried to problem-solve like I'd seen frat party boys do, pushing the cork inside the bottle. So I desperately tried that, unsuccessfully. Then I realized: Wait! I have a power drill! You might see where this is going… I spun the drill through the cork to get the wine. I thought I'd make a neat tiny hole for pouring, but instead, the cork ruptured into a million tiny pieces and completely disintegrated into the bottle. I brought it to eye level and looked at the pieces that were impossible to pick out. Fuck it. I took a deep breath and downed all of it. As I lay on my floor at 3 a.m., utterly ashamed and sedated with cork slushie in my belly, I thought, How did I end up here? I looked up in defeat and said, 'God? Universe? Whoever is listening, help me. I cannot do this alone.' Help did come, but the next 90 days were the hardest months of my life. Getting sober is an absolute bitch. It is, by far, the most challenging work I've ever done. It is also absolutely, unequivocally, the best thing I've ever experienced. I'm proud to say that I'm now almost four years sober, and I'm grateful, because it led me to self-discovery at a fairly young age. 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
Ted Danson and wife Mary Steenburgen are "nauseatingly in love" after nearly 30 years of marriage. During SiriusXM's "Where Everybody Knows Your Name" podcast, Danson – who hosts the show with Woody Harrelson – told guest Brett Goldstein that he will be working with his wife, actress Mary Steenburgen, in season two of "Man On The Inside." He also explained that starring alongside each other in the show has made them fall in love again. "Oh, it's just magical. We're falling in love. The story evolves, but I'm just head-over-heels in love with her and to sit there on camera and look into your wife's eyes…. And we're nauseatingly in love in private life and to just disappear into her eyes in front of a camera is pretty astounding," Danson said. Goldstein asked Danson how working alongside his wife has been, and the actor replied, "Oh, it's delicious." Goldstein was full of questions and told Danson, "I am freaked out by the idea of couples who act together. How does it work? And how do you leave your house? You go to work together, in the car? And then what happens? Did you act together before you got together?" Danson explained that he met his wife on the set of a movie, but he learned quickly he had to check his ego "at the door." "I realized part of my job is to host my wife. I was here last year. I am this 'Man on the Inside.' And if she doesn't have a wonderful time, I'm an a--hole. And that's on me. And that's just my attitude," Danson said. Danson and Steenburgen first met in 1983 and married in 1995. They each have two children from previous marriages. In January, Steenburgen admitted that she thought Danson was a bit of a ladies' man before she met him – similar to the character he played on "Cheers" from 1982 to 1993. "I admired him so much as an actor, but I didn't personally know him, and I had this stupid idea that he was, like, maybe kind of a slick guy," she told People at the time. However, she soon realized "how wrong" she was. "Slick guys don't say, 'gosh-a-rooni,' after making love. I'd like to apologize to my granddaughters," she jokingly added. She added that there's a reason Danson is "treasured" by everyone he works with. "He's just so loving and takes such joy in acting that all of us who are hard at work away from our families for long hours get to work on a set that is dictated by his kindness," she said. She continued, "I also fell in love with the sort of father that he is and with his beloved daughters... Ted loves them with all his heart and yet had space in there to love my Lilly and Charlie so perfectly as well. It's pretty thrilling to go through life with Ted Danson." The couple's best quality time is very early in the morning, according to Danson. "The most fun is the early mornings," Danson told People of their 4:30 togetherness time. "Coffee in bed, playing Wordle, Connections, and Spelling Bee, talking and laughing and sharing. To both of us, it's like heaven on Earth." He added, "Even if she's working in a different time zone, we will wake up in time to be able to play our games and have coffee over the phone."