A connections word puzzle about the Mariners’ 6-5 victory over the A’s

Connection is also the word I would use to describe the Mariners’ bats vis-a-vis seemingly every pitch these days

Today’s recap will be guided by a Lookout Landing edition of the New York Times game called Connections, in which you try to group 16 words into four groups of four that share a similarity. Here are the directions from the creators:

Find groups of four items that share something in common.

- Select four items and tap ‘Submit’ to check if your guess is correct.

- Find the groups without making 4 mistakes!

Category Examples

- FISH: Bass, Flounder, Salmon, Trout

- FIRE _____: Ant, Drill, Island, Opal

Categories will always be more specific than “5-LETTER-WORDS,” “NAMES” or “VERBS.”

Each puzzle has exactly one solution. Watch out for words that seem to belong to multiple categories!

Each group is assigned a color, which will be revealed as you solve: Yellow is the most straightforward, then green, then blue, and purple is the trickiest. You don’t have to guess in that order.

Here’s the link to today’s puzzle from the New York Times, if you want to play a round to try to get the hang of how the game works.

And here is the link to the version I made for your recap today. It’s on an interactive site, and the main difference between that site and the NYT version is that this version will not cut you off after four wrong guesses. You can continue guessing forever. So if you give up, come back here for the answers. And if you want, I’ve embedded the analog version below as a static image, though you won’t know if you have a group right, thus helping you get the other groups by having eliminated four words. Here’s the link to the interactive one again. Use the interactive one.

And here, after several lines of periods to hide it from view, are the answers and your recap.

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While the Athletics’ move to yet another new home is not without drama, it comes at a convenient time for the franchise, as they’re getting competitive again. As fortunate as it is for the team and its maltreated fans, I find it extremely annoying. The first foundational piece of their rebuild, Lawrence Butler, had been struggling early on in the year, but had a great game today, going ya ya off Bryan Woo as part of the A’s building an early lead. Their Rookie of the Year candidate, 2023 sixth-overall pick Jacob Wilson, took Butler’s spot at the top of the lineup and rewarded the faith with a four-hit day. That included a single on Woo’s first pitch of the day and two doubles. Making matters worse, the A’s most recent call-up, starting pitcher Gunnar Hoglund, appears to be good. His rising fastball and well-commanded sweeper tortured the Mariners today, with the latter picking up six whiffs on 11 swings. He’s still a rookie, and the Mariners’ offense is still pretty good these days, so they did get five hits to just three strikeouts in his 5.1 innings today, but I do not love that the A’s are going to have this guy around for the rest of the decade. Thanks in large part to Butler and Wilson, Hoglund left the game with a 5-1 lead.

The Mariners’ starter today has been their most reliable in the first month of 2025, Bryan Woo. Add to that his proclivity for dominating his hometown A’s, and things were looking promising. But the Athletics were in attack mode against the fastball-dominant Woo today, able to hang three runs on him in just 16 pitches to the first five batters, besting the number of runs Woo had given up to them in total across his three prior starts in Oakland.

Cal Raleigh adjusted quickly, calling for more change ups and sweepers, and getting the hitters off the fastball allowed Woo to get back to it. And just like Cal, the offense had Woo’s back with a plucky sixth inning, punctuated by Rowdy Tellez sending a bing bong onto the berm to get the score to 5-4, A’s. With the team back in it, Woo rallied to strike out the side in the bottom half. That took him to an even 100 pitches, a career high, and six innings pitched, the 15th time in his last 18 starts that he’s gone at least six innings. Six strikeouts and one walk over six is pretty solid for what we consider a bad outing from Woo at this point. He even helped his own cause with a great play in the field, perhaps feeling the heat from Matt Brash’s return threatening his status as Seattle’s best fielding pitcher.

As in the last time we did a Connections recap, Dylan Moore, today’s second baseman, is the blindingly obvious winner of today’s Sun Hat Award. He started it early with a couple web gems in the third. . .

. . . and fourth innings.

In the fifth, he singled and then stole second base when Hoglund was tying his shoe and nobody on the A’s had thought to call for a time out. That allowed him to score the Mariners’ first run on a rocket double from Ben Williamson, whose power potential I continue to think is underrated.

The eighth inning started with Randy Arozarena drawing a nine-pitch walk, making me appreciate that for as annoying as I find the A’s, it’s not like the Mariners do not have their own pests. Master Bunny pinch ran and stole second base, setting up a hero moment for the Mariners’ newest player to sport a Number 4 jersey. Leody Taveras came through with the game-tying RBI single in his first game as a Mariner and then stole second base himself. That brought up DMo once again, who blasted a line drive to the gap, bringing home Taveras for the go-ahead run.

When he followed that up with a rangy catch in the eighth, it felt like he was just showing off.

This one’s going to be the hackiest connection to today’s game, but Big Ben has a spire, so we’re going to use it to highlight the third day in a row of impressive work from the Mariners bullpen. (Because of Gabe Speier. Get it?) Eduard Bazardo faced the minimum in the seventh (a Jacob Wilson single erased by a double play) and dispatched Andujar to open the eighth thanks to DMo’s sweet catch. With a pair of lefties up next, Dan Wilson called in Gabe Speier, who, as he does, retired two batters on four pitches: a whiff, a called strike, and contact with expected batting averages of .000 and .160. That left the ninth to Andrés Muñoz, who, in the midst of raising money for Seattle Area Feline Rescue, is also pitching like one of the best on the planet right now. With five whiffs on six swings at his slider, the most delicious one was one that wasn’t offered at: the one that froze new nemesis Jacob Wilson in his tracks to end the game on a called strike three, cementing the Mariners’ ninth series win in a row.