About The Chains
The Chains is a free daily sports connection puzzle. Pick any two players and there is usually a path between them through the teams and colleges they shared. The game turns that idea into a puzzle you can finish in a few minutes.
Hi, I'm Mike
The Chains started as a bar game. Whenever my friends and I were hanging out, at a bar, on the couch, or just killing time, we played a verbal version. Someone names a player, the next person names a player who went to the same school or played for the same team, and it goes around the group until somebody gets stuck. Half the fun was arguing about whether a guy really played for a team. It worked across every sport, and it never got old.
Around the same time our group chats filled up with daily games: Immaculate Grid, Wordle, the LinkedIn games. I loved the ritual of everyone posting a result and comparing. What I couldn't find was a daily puzzle that felt like the game we were already playing out loud, one that wasn't locked to a single sport. So I built it, mostly for fun, and it grew from there. Chains Live is basically the bar version with a scoreboard.
I'm a Browns, Guardians and Cavs fan, and SMU for college. My favorite way to win a chain is with a deep cut like Peyton Hillis or Fozzy Whittaker, which is a big reason the rarity scoring exists: naming the obvious star works, but finding the guy nobody thought of feels better.
I still make this for the same reason I started. It is fun to play with people who like this stuff. If you have a chain you are proud of, a player we got wrong, or an idea for the game, send it my way on the Contact page.
The idea
Sports fans already play this game in their heads: who played with who, who went to which school, who was traded where. The Chains gives that habit rules and a score. Each day you get a Start player and a Finish player and build a chain of real players between them. Every link has to be something the league or the college system actually created, such as a shared roster or a shared school, so the puzzle rewards what you know rather than what you can guess.
Beyond the shortest path, each day carries an objective that changes how you think about the board. One day every player must share a position, another day the chain must pass through an award winner, or through someone born in a particular country, or it must alternate between team links and college links. The objective is what keeps the puzzle from being a pure shortest-path exercise.
Sports and modes
The game currently covers the NFL and MLB, with more sports planned. Each sport has a daily puzzle, a harder daily mode that only counts true same-season teammates, an unlimited practice mode, and a full archive of past puzzles. Scores feed a leaderboard with daily streaks. The rules and scoring are explained in full on the How to Play page.
Where the data comes from
NFL rosters and statistics come from public NFL data sources and cover every player who appeared in a regular-season game from 1990 onward. MLB data comes from the official MLB Stats API and covers every player who appeared in a regular-season game from 1969 onward. Player recognition, which feeds the rarity tiers, is estimated from how often each player's public encyclopedia page is read, combined with career statistics, longevity and awards. Award and milestone lists, such as MVP winners or 1,500-yard rushing seasons, are curated by hand and checked against the real roster data before they are used in a puzzle.
How a puzzle is built and checked
Puzzles are generated in advance by a program that picks a Start and Finish player from a pool of recognizable names, chooses an objective, and measures the shortest legal chain that satisfies it. That measured length becomes par. A separate solver then re-checks every queued puzzle against the full player data to confirm it can be completed at par and that the objective can be met. The generator also avoids repeating the same team, college or objective type on consecutive days, so the daily puzzle does not fall into a pattern.
When a puzzle turns out to be flawed after it goes live, or a data error is found, we fix it and correct the affected data rather than leave it. If you spot a wrong team, a missing player or a puzzle that does not work, please tell us using the details on the Contact page.
Advertising and Chains+
The Chains is free to play. The site is supported by display advertising, shown only after you accept non-essential cookies, and by an optional paid subscription, Chains+, which removes ads and adds extra modes. Ads never affect puzzles, scoring or leaderboard results. See the Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy for the details.
Independence
The Chains is an independent project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by the NFL, MLB or any team, league, college or player. Team names, logos and player names are used only to identify the real people and organizations the puzzles are about.