IT General

Today's Connections: Sports Edition is for anyone who played a stick-based sport.

As we've shared in previous hints stories, this is a version of the popular New York Times word game that seeks to test the knowledge of sports fans.

Like the original Connections, the game is all about finding the "common threads between words." And just like Wordle, Connections resets after midnight and each new set of words gets trickier and trickier — so we've served up some hints and tips to get you over the hurdle.

If you just want to be told today's puzzle, you can jump to the end of this article for the latest Connections solution. But if you'd rather solve it yourself, keep reading for some clues, tips, and strategies to assist you.

SEE ALSO: Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more: Play games on Mashable What is Connections: Sports Edition?

The NYT's latest daily word game has launched in association with The Athletic, the New York Times property that provides the publication's sports coverage. Connections can be played on both web browsers and mobile devices and require players to group four words that share something in common.

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Each puzzle features 16 words and each grouping of words is split into four categories. These sets could comprise of anything from book titles, software, country names, etc. Even though multiple words will seem like they fit together, there's only one correct answer.

If a player gets all four words in a set correct, those words are removed from the board. Guess wrong and it counts as a mistake — players get up to four mistakes until the game ends.

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Players can also rearrange and shuffle the board to make spotting connections easier. Additionally, each group is color-coded with yellow being the easiest, followed by green, blue, and purple. Like Wordle, you can share the results with your friends on social media.

SEE ALSO: Wordle-obsessed? These are the best word games to play IRL. Here's a hint for today's Connections: Sports Edition categories

Want a hint about the categories without being told the categories? Then give these a try:

• Yellow: Stick

• Green: Cinderella

• Blue: European champions

• Purple: Sounds like an MLB team

Here are today's Connections: Sports Edition categories

Need a little extra help? Today's connections fall into the following categories:

• Yellow: Used to Hit a Ball

• Green: Unlikely Winner

• Blue: Last Four Men's Clubs To Win The Champions League

• Purple: Homophones of MLB Teams

Looking for Wordle today? Here's the answer to today's Wordle.

Ready for the answers? This is your last chance to turn back and solve today's puzzle before we reveal the solutions.

Drumroll, please!

The solution to today's Connections: Sports Edition #529 is...

What is the answer to Connections: Sports Edition today?

• Used to Hit a Ball - BAT, MALLET, PADDLE, RACKET

• Unlikely Winner - DARK HORSE, LONG SHOT, MINNOW, UNDERDOG

• Last Four Men's Clubs To Win The Champions League - CHELSEA, MANCHESTER CITY, PSG, REAL MADRID

• Homophones of MLB Teams - FILLIES, RAISE, READ SOCKS, ROILS

Don't feel down if you didn't manage to guess it this time. There will be new sports Connections for you to stretch your brain with tomorrow, and we'll be back again to guide you with more helpful hints.

Are you also playing NYT Strands? See hints and answers for today's Strands.

If you're looking for more puzzles, Mashable's got games now! Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.

Not the day you're after? Here's the solution to today's Connections.

If you like playing daily word games like Wordle, then Hurdle is a great game to add to your routine.

There are five rounds to the game. The first round sees you trying to guess the word, with correct, misplaced, and incorrect letters shown in each guess. If you guess the correct answer, it'll take you to the next hurdle, providing the answer to the last hurdle as your first guess. This can give you several clues or none, depending on the words. For the final hurdle, every correct answer from previous hurdles is shown, with correct and misplaced letters clearly shown.

An important note is that the number of times a letter is highlighted from previous guesses does necessarily indicate the number of times that letter appears in the final hurdle.

If you find yourself stuck at any step of today's Hurdle, don't worry! We have you covered.

SEE ALSO: Hurdle: Everything you need to know to find the answers Hurdle Word 1 hint

Broken.

SEE ALSO: Apple’s new M3 MacBook Air is $300 off at Amazon. And yes, I’m tempted. Hurdle Word 1 answer

FRITZ

Hurdle Word 2 hint

To bother.

SEE ALSO: Wordle today: Answer, hints for March 6, 2026 Hurdle Word 2 Answer

ANNOY

Hurdle Word 3 hint

Hot food.

SEE ALSO: NYT Connections Sports Edition today: Hints and answers for March 6 SEE ALSO: NYT Connections hints today: Clues, answers for March 6, 2026 Hurdle Word 3 answer

SPICY

Hurdle Word 4 hint

After eighth.

Hurdle Word 4 answer

NINTH

Final Hurdle hint

A film star.

SEE ALSO: Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more: Games available on Mashable Hurdle Word 5 answer

ACTOR

If you're looking for more puzzles, Mashable's got games now! Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.

The Moon doesn’t look the same every night, and there’s a reason for that. As it moves through the lunar cycle, the amount of light we see changes slightly day by day, creating different phases visible from Earth. So, what's tonight's phase, and what does it mean?

What is today’s Moon phase?

As of Friday, March 6, the Moon phase is Waning Gibbous. According to NASA's Daily Moon Guide, 92% of the Moon will be lit up tonight.

The Moon is appearing less visible each night, but for now there's still so much you can see when you look up. With no visual aids, just craning your neck up and looking, you can see the Aristarchus Plateau, Mare Tranquillitatis, and the Tycho Crater. If you have binoculars, you should also catch a glimpse of the Mare Nectaris, Mare Frigoris and the Clavius Crater. A telescope will let you see even more, with standouts including the Linne Crater, Apollo 11 landing spot, and the Caucasus Mountains.

When is the next Full Moon?

In North America, the next Full Moon is predicted to take place on April 1.

What are Moon phases?

NASA says the Moon takes around 29.5 days to circle Earth, moving through a set of eight distinct phases along the way. Even though we always see the same side of the Moon, the portion lit by the Sun changes as it travels, which is why it can look full, half-lit, or barely visible at different points in the cycle. These changing views are what we call the lunar phases, and there are eight in total:

New Moon - The Moon is between Earth and the sun, so the side we see is dark (in other words, it's invisible to the eye).

Waxing Crescent - A small sliver of light appears on the right side (Northern Hemisphere).

First Quarter - Half of the Moon is lit on the right side. It looks like a half-Moon.

Waxing Gibbous - More than half is lit up, but it’s not quite full yet.

Full Moon - The whole face of the Moon is illuminated and fully visible.

Waning Gibbous - The Moon starts losing light on the right side. (Northern Hemisphere)

Third Quarter (or Last Quarter) - Another half-Moon, but now the left side is lit.

Waning Crescent - A thin sliver of light remains on the left side before going dark again.

Amazon went down on Thursday, effectively slowing the U.S. capitalist machine for at least a few hours. Thousands of bereft shoppers reported issues with the online retail giant starting just before 2 p.m. ET / 11 a.m. PT, which left them temporarily unable to complete their purchases.

SEE ALSO: The FCC wants to hear your Verizon outage experience

Crowdsourced outage tracker Downdetector received nearly 160,000 error reports for Amazon within 15 minutes, with checkout issues accounting for 38 percent. (Disclosure: Mashable and Downdetector share the same parent company, Ziff Davis.) Users also reported problems with Amazon's mobile app, as well as with its product page. Downdetector reports that the disruption does not appear to be limited to any particular network provider.

Amazon's official customer service X account acknowledged complaints about the problem, though has not yet provided any explanation as to what might be causing it. Complaints on Downdetector began to drop significantly two hours after they first began to spike, and some users report that Amazon had resumed working for them. As of writing, Mashable is not encountering any issues accessing Amazon's website in the U.S. or Australia. However, others still claim that they are having problems.

"We’re sorry that some customers may be experiencing issues," Amazon Help responded to multiple disgruntled customers. "We appreciate your patience as we work to resolve the issue."

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Drone strikes by the Iranian military recently damaged three Amazon data centres in the Middle East, disrupting some of its services in the region. However, these strikes only appear to have impacted local operations, meaning the U.S. outage is likely unrelated despite online speculation to the contrary.

We tend to worry a lot about the lifespan of our SSDs—and quite frankly, I often warn you to keep it in mind whenever I write articles myself.

After a big shakeup at Microsoft's gaming division, the new Xbox head had a big announcement to make on Thursday.

The new CEO of Microsoft Gaming, Asha Sharma, blew the lid off the next-generation Xbox gaming console in an X post. Sharma confirmed that the new Xbox gaming console is codenamed Project Helix.

"Great start to the morning with Team Xbox, where we talked about our commitment to the return of Xbox including Project Helix, the code name for our next generation console," Sharma posted along with a picture showing the words "Project Helix" on a black background.

That sort of looks like an X? Credit: Microsoft

Project Helix would be the fifth-generation Xbox.

While she didn't dive too deeply into the details yet, Sharma did share one important feature for the next-gen console: gamers will be able to play both Xbox and PC games on the Project Helix console. This confirms some long-standing rumors about the console.

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"Project Helix will lead in performance and play your Xbox and PC games," she said. "Looking forward to chatting about this more with partners and studios at my first GDC next week!"

When Mashable spoke to then-Xbox President Sarah Bond last year, Bond hinted that the Xbox console of the future would be more like a high-end gaming PC than a traditional gaming console. Bond also emphasized the importance of cross-platform games to the Xbox brand.

Ever since Bond's surprise departure, rumors have been swirling around what's next for Xbox.

While much is still unknown about Project Helix, a public confirmation of its existence from Sharma is big news for gamers.

Since 2022, Alan Ritchson has been taking names and kicking butt in Reacher. With season 4 still months away, fans of Ritchson can watch the actor in War Machine, a new Netflix movie and the perfect substitute for Reacher. War Machine arrives at 12:00 a.m. PT on March 6, 2026, making it the ideal Netflix movie to watch this weekend.

TL;DR: Use code PLAY through March 22 to get a lifetime of Pok Pok for a one-time payment of $44.97 (reg. $250) — a Montessori-inspired, ad-free learning app for kids 2–8.

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$250 Save $205.03   Get Deal

Not all screen time has to feel like a compromise. If you’ve been looking for something that keeps your child engaged without the noise, ads, or overstimulation, a Pok Pok lifetime subscription is $44.97 (reg. $250) through March 22 with code PLAY — and it’s built very differently from most kids’ apps.

Pok Pok is designed around Montessori principles: child-led exploration, hands-on learning, and open-ended play. There are no levels to beat, no points to chase, and no flashy distractions. Kids tap a toy and simply start exploring. That’s it.

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The experience is calm and thoughtfully crafted, with hand-drawn animations and gentle sound design. It works offline, which makes it especially helpful for travel days or long car rides. And because it’s ad-free and COPPA-certified, parents don’t have to worry about surprise pop-ups or in-app purchase pressure.

The app supports foundational skills in STEM, counting, cause and effect, language, and problem-solving — all through play. Whether your child is mixing outfits in Dress-Up, building worlds in World Puzzle, exploring Space, or tapping through Number Journey, the focus stays on curiosity, not competition.

Family access across devices is included, and new content rolls out regularly to keep things fresh.

For parents who want screen time to feel intentional instead of chaotic, Pok Pok offers a refreshingly thoughtful alternative.

Get a lifetime of Pok Pok for the one-time payment of $44.97 (reg. $250) through March 22 with code PLAY.

StackSocial prices subject to change.

Want to tune into the best shows on Netflix? The platform hosts a vast collection of award-winning titles that you can pick from, from Oscar-winning movies to Emmy-winning shows.

Elon Musk's X is reinventing its Creator Subscriptions, dubbing the new offering — wait for it — Creator Subscriptions 2.0.

Creator Subscriptions, in effect, allow people to pay their favorite influencers for exclusive offerings. That's right, some major changes are coming to the website formerly known as Twitter (and not just a continued lurch toward the far right). So, what's new? A few things. Here's what you need to know.

SEE ALSO: Snapchat is testing creator subscriptions, giving top creators a new direct revenue stream Exclusive threads

X rolled out the ability for creators to hide a thread for subscribers only. So regular people will see the first post, while only subscribers will see the follow-up. It's a paywall of sorts on a thread.

"Instead of sending followers to external websites or newsletters—and risking drop-off along the way—audiences can now subscribe directly from the conversation," wrote X in a press release. "This approach allows creators to maximize both distribution and conversion: reach everyone with the initial post, while rewarding subscribers with deeper, exclusive content."

Think of it as a tease that creators can use to attract more subscribers.

Subscriber-only content in the main feed

Instead of being hidden on a separate tab, the subscriber-only content will now appear in a creator's main feed. That should make it easier for followers to keep up with all the content.

Back-end changes for creators

X highlighted several changes for creators, including a new dashboard and a shareable subscription card to promote their work.

"We are doubling down on creators, the platform's most influential experts, thought leaders, and voices, by investing in tools that enable sustainable incomes and deeper connections with their audiences," said Allegra Jacchia, Creators Product at X, in a press release.

I don’t know about you guys, but the arrival of a new month excites me, specifically because of all the fresh content being released on my favorite streaming platforms. March looks to be utterly illuminating on Paramount+, with the premieres of two new Taylor Sheridan series, the streaming debut of a breath-holding survival thriller based on a true story, a new, cut-throat cooking competition, and a documentary film that’s sure to titillate your senses.

We're in the swing of MWC 2026, the annual smartphone and consumer electronics trade show where leading brands announce their latest products. Unsurprisingly, there's no shortage of cool tech to talk about, but these are our favorites of 2026.

United Airlines flyers will experience a little more peace in the air as the company steps up enforcement of its noise rules.

In a recent change to the air travel giant's Contract of Carriage — essentially United's Terms and Conditions for ticket holders — the airline reserves the right to remove, and even ban, passengers who do not use headphones to listen to their music, movies, and social media feeds.

SEE ALSO: Disinformation on U.S.-Iran war takes over the internet

According to the United contract's Refusal of Transport rule, the company has the "right to refuse transport on a permanent or temporary basis or shall have the right to remove from the aircraft at any point, any passenger for the following reasons." Buried in the rule's safety provisions, which outline other reasons for removal such as inappropriate dress or carrying weapons on board, the list now includes "passengers who fail to use headphones while listening to audio or video content."

"We’ve always encouraged customers to use headphones when listening to audio content — and our Wi-Fi rules already remind customers to use headphones. It seemed like a good time to make that even clearer by adding it to the contract of carriage," said United spokesman Josh Freed in a statement to the press.

SEE ALSO: Rate your favorite audio brands for a chance to win a $250 Amazon gift card

Most carriers have policies that urge fliers to use headphones during flights. Southwest, for instance, lists headphones as a requirement on its website FAQ. Frontier also includes headphone requirements in its baggage policy, MSN reported. United appears to be the first to include headphone wearing in its passenger contract with explicit means to enforce the policy.

Across the industry, more and more air travelers are reporting passenger disruptions on flights, including violent altercations with fellow flyers and airline staff.

Fantasy author Sarah J. Maas has big plans for the future of A Court of Thorns and Roses. In an appearance on the March 4 episode of the Call Her Daddy podcast, Maas revealed that not one but two new ACOTAR books are on the way — and they'll be arriving just a few months apart.

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The sixth book in the ACOTAR series will hit shelves on Oct. 27 of this year, followed by the seventh on Jan. 12, 2027. (Insert 67 joke here.) Speaking with host Alex Cooper, Maas said the upcoming releases are part of a "really, really, really big" story she has been waiting to tell.

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  Pre-order Here Opens in a new window Credit: Barnes & Noble A Court of Thorns and Roses 7 $38 at Barnes & Noble
  Pre-order Here

"It's meant to be read ideally as one massive, massive story as opposed to like in a trilogy," Maas said. "It's not a trilogy. Arcs aren't wrapped up. It's like if you expanded all of part one, all of part two — all the parts — it would be huge like that. I've never told a story that way. This is how it wants to come out."

Few fantasy series of the past decade have built an online fandom quite like A Court of Thorns and Roses, Maas' bestselling saga about a young woman drawn into the dangerous and seductive world of the fae courts. Part of the blockbuster fantasy empire that has sold more than 75 million copies worldwide, the series has become a defining force of the BookTok era, helping popularize the romantasy genre. Posts dissecting Maas' sprawling fantasy world regularly generate millions of views, from elaborate character theories about Rhysand, Feyre, and the rest of the Night Court to heated ship debates and deep dives into every corner of Prythian.

Unsurprisingly, news of two new books arriving within just a few months immediately sent fans into speculation mode across TikTok, Reddit, and X, where readers began theorizing about the story's direction and which characters might take center stage next.

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The announcement’s debut on the Call Her Daddy podcast also reflects a broader shift in how major cultural news spreads. In recent years, podcasts have become a place where celebrities and creators reveal major projects directly to fans and occasionally drop the kind of headline-making news once reserved for traditional news outlets.

For ACOTAR fans, however, the biggest takeaway was simple: The next trip to Velaris is finally on the horizon.

When Visual Studio Code (VS Code) was released in 2015, it revolutionized code editing. But it can do so much more for the average person who doesn't write code (yet). Let's explore how it can be useful to you, even if you can't tell your HTML from your C#.

My Samsung Galaxy phone is four years old and feeling a bit long in the tooth. I'm planning to finally upgrade this year, but I have to admit that nothing on the market compares to an old favorite. I'd take the LG G2 in a heartbeat. Here's why.

The White House is using clips from popular video game Call of Duty in official posts about the war with Iran, just days after the U.S. entered an armed conflict in the Middle East.

The footage is seen amid a compilation of images of U.S. warfare posted to the official White House X account. The clip begins with gameplay from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III, a scene depicting a kill streak animation in which a user unlocks the ability to launch a nuclear arsenal. The video is accompanied by the text "Courtesy of the Red, White & Blue."

SEE ALSO: Disinformation on U.S.-Iran war takes over the internet

To many, the post was an unsettling portrayal of a military strike that resulted in the deaths of thousands of Iranians, according to reports. A girl's elementary school in Minab was hit in an attack, killing dozens of children, and it's not clear if the school was an intended target by U.S. or Israeli forces.

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In a reply to the White House's post, Chance Glasco, founding developer of the Call of Duty franchise, said: "This doesn't surprise me. I remember after Activision took over post-Respawn formation there was a very awkward pressure from Activision for us to make the next CoD about Iran attacking Israel. Luckily the vast majority of our devs were disgusted by the idea and it got shot down."

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The internet has been rife with misinformation surrounding military operations and counterattacks in Iran, including posts intending to exaggerate or mislead users about the country's response to American and Israeli strikes.

Known political bots began posting decontextualized images and videos, including video game and flight simulator screenshots, just hours after news broke of the coordinated attacks. AI-manipulated images and videos had garnered millions of impressions on X, Instagram, and Facebook in a handful of days, according to researchers. With no sign that the posts would slow down as strikes continued, X announced it would be suspending users from its monetized Creator Revenue Sharing program if they posted AI-generated content depicting armed conflict without proper labeling. 

Video game footage has become a tool for U.S. propaganda, and has been used repeatedly by agencies of the Trump administration.

Last year, the Department of Homeland Security used images from Xbox game Halo in social media posts, emblazoned with the phrase "Destroy The Flood" and a link to an ICE recruitment page. The department had previously posted videos of immigration raids with the Pokemon tagline "Gotta catch 'em all." The posts came amid escalating operations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), including Minnesota-based "Operation Metro Surge," which would result in the killings of Minneapolis residents Rene Good and Alex Pretti, and Los Angeles resident Keith Porter. All three were U.S. citizens.

Printers on Windows have historically required individual drivers on Windows, which causes security vulnerabilities, limited hardware upgrades, and reliability problems. Now, Microsoft wants to replace that with “a fundamentally modern approach,” which includes a slow phaseout for legacy printer drivers.

When you're putting together a toolbox for professional work, the main difference between tools that last just a few years or first time tools, and those that stand the test of time often comes down to choosing what is durable with a clever design.

Anthropic, the AI company behind the popular Claude AI chatbot, received praise last week for standing up to the Trump administration over the U.S. military's use of its AI tools.

However, the company may be reversing course.

According to a new report from the Financial Times, Anthropic and the U.S. Department of Defense have reopened negotiations on how the government can leverage Anthropic tech for military purposes.

The breakdown between Anthropic and the U.S. government began after the AI company received a $200 million contract from the U.S. Defense Department.

However, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei later wanted guarantees that the U.S. government would not utilize its Claude AI models for domestic surveillance or autonomous weapons. The Trump administration refused this request, saying it would use AI technology for any "lawful" purpose.

SEE ALSO: 'The AI Doc' trailer: Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, and more discuss the precarious future of AI

As talks between Anthropic and the U.S. government broke down, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth even threatened to designate the company as a supply chain risk to national security.

President Trump called Anthropic a "radical left, woke company" in a post on Truth Social and ordered the federal government to cease using Anthropic's technology over the following six months.

The Financial Times reports that Amodei has now re-entered negotiations in hopes of avoiding the supply chain risk designation. Amodei is now discussing terms of a potential deal with Undersecretary of Defense Emil Michael, who called the Anthropic CEO "a liar" with a "God-complex" in a social media post just last week.

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“Near the end of the negotiation the [department] offered to accept our current terms if we deleted a specific phrase about ‘analysis of bulk acquired data’ which was the single line in the contract that exactly matched this scenario we were most worried about," Amodei said in an internal memo to Anthropic employees as reported by The Information. "We found that very suspicious."

Days after talks between Anthropic and the DoD fell apart, OpenAI announced that it had secured a deal with the U.S. government for the use of its AI tools for military use in "classified environments."

OpenAI quickly received blowback from users, forcing CEO Sam Altman to attempt to address concerns. Just days later, an internal memo from Altman leaked, where the OpenAI CEO told employees that it would be amending its agreement with the federal government, as the deal was rushed. Altman stated that the U.S. government assured OpenAI it would not use its technology for domestic surveillance.

Amodei's internal memo reportedly knocked Altman, calling OpenAI and the Pentagon's statements about the issues with Anthropic “just straight up lies." Amodei accused Altman of partaking in “safety theater” regarding his presentation of the deal and stated that OpenAI employees who believed the company were “sort of a gullible bunch.”

If Amodei is successful in securing a new agreement with the federal government, the U.S. military would continue to use the technology, which is reportedly already being used to launch strikes in Iran.

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Disclosure: Ziff Davis, Mashable’s parent company, in April 2025 filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.