FOURSURE

November 1, 2026 Puzzle Breakdown

Four groups, four words each — here's the connections between today's words.

We start off today on the gentlest footing with four things you are accustomed to seeing attached to the word stick. Whether you are bouncing on one, chasing a ball on horseback, running across the turf, or just trying to finish a frozen treat before it melts onto your fingers, the tail end of the phrase remains the same. Consider it an easy warm-up before things get complicated.

Slap on some blades or hop on a sled, because all four of these require a frozen surface to function. Hockey, curling, luge, and figure skating make up today's second group, covering the distinctly chilly side of the Winter Games. Hopefully you spotted the common terrain before getting iced out.

Today's penultimate set gathered some heavy hitters from the world of preppy apparel. Brooks Brothers, J. Crew, Lacoste, and Fred Perry all share rack space as famous clothing brands, even if a couple of them sound more like people you might run into at the country club. If you spent too long looking for tennis legends or fictional siblings, that was entirely by design.

For the hardest group of the day, you had to supply the trailing partner. Tacking play onto the end of each term turns a bit of roughhousing into horseplay, an elaborate costume hobby into cosplay, a digital monitor into a screenplay, and a clever turn of phrase into wordplay. It was a straightforward fill-in-the-blank once you stopped reading them as disconnected nouns.