Roster

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How To Play

1. Begin with two players. The Starting Player (Kobe Bryant) and the Target Player (LeBron James).

Attempt to connect the two players with a common teammate.

2. Derek Fisher played with Kobe Bryant on the Los Angeles Lakers in 1997, but he was never a teammate with LeBron James. Derek Fisher has been sucessfully linked to Kobe Bryant, but now you must attempt to find a common teammate between Derek Fisher and LeBron James.

3. Russell Westbrook played with Derek Fisher on the Oklahoma City Thunder in 2012 and LeBron James on the Los Angeles Lakers in 2022. The puzzle has been successfully completed.

Rules

Objective: Connect the Starting Player to the Target Player by guessing players who were teammates with the previous player in your chain.
Valid Connections: Each guessed player must have been teammates with the previous player. Teammate requirements vary by sport, as explained below.
No Repeats: You cannot use the same player more than once.
Incorrect Guesses: You are allowed two incorrect guesses. Your third incorrect guess ends the game in a loss.
Winning: Successfully connect your chain to the Target Player to complete the roster.
Giving Up: You can give up at any time, but doing so results in a Game Score of 0.
The Gauntlet: After completing the daily roster, you can choose to run The Gauntlet and replay the same puzzle with previously correct guesses excluded from future rounds.

The Gauntlet

After completing a sport's daily puzzle, players can choose to Run The Gauntlet—an exercise in masochism. The challenge is simple: complete the same puzzle over and over again, but with one catch. Every player you correctly guess is permanently excluded from the rest of your Gauntlet.

As more players are eliminated, finding new connections becomes increasingly difficult. Depending on the puzzle and how many players are used in each round, a Gauntlet can potentially last hundreds of rounds.

After each successful round, players can choose to finish or continue their Gauntlet. They can also use the Check Remaining Connections feature between rounds to determine whether another valid connection exists. This check can be used as often as desired, although it may take a few seconds.

If every possible connection has been exhausted, the player is crowned Gauntlet Champion, having successfully completed the ultimate challenge. Conquering the Gauntlet is among the most prestigious achievements in all of sports trivia.

What Constitutes a Teammate?

Teammate connections are determined differently for each sport based on the available historical data. Teammate connections apply only to regular season games.

NFL: Two players are considered teammates if they played a snap (offense, defense, or special teams) on the same team at any point during the same season. They do not need to have played in the same game.
MLB: Teammate connections depend on position. If either player is a pitcher, they only need to have appeared in a game for the same team during the same season. If both are position players, they must have appeared in the same game, for the same team, at least once.
NBA: Two players are considered teammates only if they appeared in at least one game together for the same team during the same season.

Game Score

Every completed roster receives a Game Score from 0 to 10, based on how efficiently you connect the two players and how well-known your guesses are. Using fewer guesses, avoiding incorrect guesses, and choosing lesser-known players will earn you a higher score. Player notoriety is determined by career length and achievements, such as All-Star or Pro Bowl selections. A perfect score of 10 is possible by connecting the two players in just one guess using a sufficiently obscure player, without making any incorrect guesses. Giving up always results in a score of 0. A perfect 10 is not always the highest score possible.

Data

NFL: Sports Reference and nflverse

MLB: MLB API and Lahman Baseball Database