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.

I cleaned up on the purple category for today’s Connections: Sports Edition. Sports buffs who are also film fans should have the same experience. 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: Time-related.

Green group hint: Drive to survive.

Blue group hint: Retired and revered.

Purple group hint: Yo, Adrian.

Answers for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Yellow group: Interval.

Green group: F1 Grand Prix locations.

Blue group: 2025 Baseball Hall of Fame class.

Purple group: Starts of boxing movies.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections: Sports Edition answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is interval. The four answers are period, spell, stint and stretch.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is F1 Grand Prix locations. The four answers are Abu Dhabi, Baku, Monaco and Monza.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is 2025 Baseball Hall of Fame class. The four answers are Allen, Parker, Sabathia and Suzuki.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is starts of boxing movies. The four answers are Cinderella, Million, Raging and Rocky.

Meta this week unveiled the latest efforts it’s making to bolster the safety of teens and kids on its social media apps, with a particular focus on the teen-skewing Instagram. The company has touted these new features for Instagram in a blog post, most notably adding more information and warnings about accounts that teens might try to contact via direct messages.

«We’ve added new safety features to DMs in Teen Accounts to give teens more context about the accounts they’re messaging and help them spot potential scammers,» the post explained. «Now, teens will see new options to view safety tips and block an account, as well as the month and year the account joined Instagram, all prominently displayed at the top of new chats.»

DMs have also been given new block and report function, which Meta claims will allow and encourage users to do both at the same time when they run into sketchy accounts. 

The company also reported that in June, 1 million Teen Accounts reported or blocked accounts, and another 1 million used the Location Notice feature to see if an account messaging them was in a different country.

Speaking to CNET, Meta confirmed that the new DM features and the block/report options are exclusive to Instagram for now, but that they «may explore bringing them to [Facebook] Messenger in the future.» The safety and location notices touted in the blog post are available on Instagram and Facebook.

Meta has faced many accusations over the years about the effects its platforms have on minors. Just last year, bombshell accusations emerged from a memoir by a Meta whistleblower, claiming that the company served ads to teenagers based on their emotional states. 

Meta denied those claims but has taken steps in recent years to offer improved safety features for underage users on its platforms, built around new «Teen Accounts,» which limit the ability of young users to be contacted and to see certain content. 

Meta will also be rolling out similar protections for accounts run by adults that share a great deal of content related to children, such as those who post pictures and videos of their children, and accounts for children managed by their parents. The blog post explained that while such accounts «are overwhelmingly used in benign ways, unfortunately there are people who may try to abuse them, leaving sexualized comments under their posts or asking for sexual images in DMs.»

For those family blogging-style accounts, Meta is extending protections including, «automatically placing these accounts into our strictest message settings to prevent unwanted messages, and turning on Hidden Words, which filters offensive comments.»

The changes will be rolling out in the next few months.