Cracking the Code: A Fresh Look at Today's Sports Puzzle

Ever felt like you need a sports degree to tackle today's puzzle? The latest edition of the popular word game is giving players a run for their money. The challenge? It's all about knowing your colleges and their sports stars. The game, which started as a test run, has now become a permanent fixture. It launched on a big sports day, showing that it's gained a solid fan base. You can find it in a sports news app or play it for free online. Here's a little help to get you started. The puzzle has four groups, each with a different difficulty level. The easiest one is about hitting a batter with a pitch. The green group is about schools in a certain college sports conference. The blue group is about quarterbacks who've won big games. And the toughest one? It's about famous people from a well-known university. Want to know the answers? The yellow group is about words like "bean, " "drill, " "hit, " and "plunk. " The green group is about schools like James Madison, Marshall, Old Dominion, and Troy. The blue group is about quarterbacks like Elway, Manning, Starr, and Staubach. And the purple group is about Stanford alumni like Ledecky, Luck, McCaffrey, and Ogwumike. Got any tips for solving this puzzle? First, don't jump at the easiest group right away. Think about other sports categories a word might fit into. Second, remember that words can have second meanings. The puzzle loves to trick you with names that sound like regular words. And finally, the opposite is also true. Words that seem regular might actually be names of athletes.