About
Six degrees of the box score
Linkster is a free sports trivia game about how players' careers cross. Name a college two players both went to, a number they both wore, or a team they both played for, and you've linked them. Chain enough links together and you can get from almost anyone to almost anyone.
Why we made it
Every fan has played some version of this game with friends: "Name a Bear who went to Iowa." "Who else wore 87?" It's the kind of knowledge that comes from years of watching games, reading box scores and arguing about rosters, and there wasn't a good place to test it. Linkster turns those arguments into puzzles with real answers, checked against real rosters, with a fresh challenge every day.
The games
- Daily Drive: one puzzle a day, the same for everyone. Get from one player to another in as few moves as you can, and compare your score with everyone else's.
- Chain Links: golf. Rounds of 3, 9 or 18 holes, each a pair of players to connect, scored against par on themed courses that change every day.
- Classic: a back-and-forth chain against the computer. It names a player, you name a link, it answers with a new player, until you're stumped.
- Target: the Daily Drive's format with puzzles on demand, at the difficulty and seasons you choose.
- Hurry-Up: sixty seconds to name what as many pairs of players share as you can.
All of them work for the NFL, the NBA and MLB. How to play walks through each one with examples.
Where the answers come from
Every link is checked against real rosters: which players were on which team in which season, the numbers they wore and the schools they attended. The NFL data comes from nflverse (2000 to today), the NBA's from hoopR / sportsdataverse (2002 to today), and baseball's from the Lahman Baseball Database. All three are openly licensed; the data credits list each source, its license and what we changed.
The puzzles lean on players fans actually know. We rank every player by how well-known he is from his career numbers, honors such as Pro Bowls and All-Star games, and draft pedigree, so a Daily Drive starts from stars rather than practice-squad names. Par is worked out by searching the real links between those players for the shortest route, so every puzzle has a fair answer, and a sharp fan can sometimes find a shorter one.
Who we are
Linkster is made by a small independent team of sports fans. It's free to play, with no account needed, and it's supported by advertising. If you make a free account, your results, streaks and stats are saved and you can appear on the leaderboards. See the privacy policy for what we keep and why.
Found a wrong answer, a missing player or a bug? Tell us at team@playlinkster.com. Questions people ask a lot are in the FAQ.
The fine print
Linkster is an independent fan project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by the NFL, NBA, MLB, their teams, players or players' associations, or any data provider. League, team and player names are used only to describe real careers.