Pacers, Familiarly: Solving This NYT Puzzle Clue
In NYT puzzles, the word “familiarly” attached to a clue almost always means the answer is the shortened, casual, or commonly used version of something, rather than its full formal name. It’s the same instinct as calling your friend “Mike” instead of “Michael.” When a Connections category is labeled something like “NBA Teams, Familiarly,” the puzzle is asking for the nickname fans and broadcasters actually use, not the full official team name.
This pattern shows up constantly in the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle specifically, which regularly runs categories built around this exact idea. Previous puzzles have used “NBA Teams, Familiarly” as a category with answers like Cavs (for Cavaliers), Pels (for Pelicans), Sixers (for 76ers), and Wolves (for Timberwolves). In my experience, once you see one of these categories, the pattern becomes obvious. It’s always a full team name getting trimmed down to whatever fans actually say out loud during a game.
Where the Pacers Fit Into This
Here’s the thing worth flagging about the Indiana Pacers specifically: unlike the Cavaliers, Pelicans, or Timberwolves, “Pacers” doesn’t really shorten any further in common usage. Fans, broadcasters, and reporters generally just say “the Pacers,” full stop. There’s no widely used nickname-within-a-nickname the way “Sixers” works for the 76ers.
That’s actually useful information if you’re working through a puzzle and see “Pacers” or “Indiana’s NBA team” as a clue in a “familiarly” category. The answer is very likely just Pacers itself, since that’s already the informal, commonly used version of the team’s full name, Indiana Pacers. I wasn’t able to confirm the exact date or puzzle number where this specific clue appeared, so if you’re checking a particular day’s Connections grid, it’s worth cross-referencing against that day’s actual puzzle rather than assuming this answer applies universally. Puzzle categories change daily, and clue wording varies even when the underlying team doesn’t.
A Bit of Background on Why They’re Called the Pacers
Understanding the name itself helps make sense of why this team shows up so often in crossword and word puzzle clues in the first place. According to accounts from the franchise’s original investors, the name Pacers was chosen as a nod to two things closely tied to Indiana: the state’s harness racing tradition, where a “pacer” refers to a horse using a specific gait, and the pace car used to lead laps at the Indianapolis 500. Investor Chuck Barnes, who had ties to horse racing and worked with racing legends like Mario Andretti and A.J. Foyt, is credited alongside his wife Lois with suggesting the name during a dinner conversation among the team’s founders.
The Indiana Pacers were established in 1967 as a founding member of the American Basketball Association, well before the NBA merger brought them into their current league in 1976. That ABA history is actually why “Pacer” and “Pacers” show up so frequently as crossword answers specifically, beyond just puzzle games like Connections. Clue databases show variations like “Hoosier hoopster,” “Indiana cager,” and “Indiana NBA player” all pointing to the same five-letter answer, PACER, in traditional crossword puzzles, which is a slightly different format than the Connections-style grouping puzzle but draws from the same basic team recognition.
How to Approach Similar “Familiarly” Clues Going Forward
If you’re regularly working through NYT puzzles and keep running into “familiarly” clues, a few practical habits make them easier to solve.
Start by identifying the category theme before locking in individual words. If a puzzle groups four words under a sports-related header, check whether they’re all professional teams first, since that’s the most common setup for this type of clue.
Think about how you’d actually say the name out loud in casual conversation, not how it appears on official team branding. Nobody says “the Philadelphia 76ers” at a bar during a game, they say “the Sixers.” That casual, spoken version is almost always what “familiarly” is pointing toward.
Watch out for teams like the Pacers where the familiar version and the full version overlap almost completely. These are actually the trickier clues in a weird way, because solvers sometimes assume there must be a further shortened version they’re missing, when really the team name itself already functions as the informal, everyday reference.
One thing worth flagging: Connections Sports Edition categories rotate daily and pull from a wide range of sports beyond just the NBA, so if you’re consistently stuck on these, building general familiarity with common team nicknames across the NBA, NFL, MLB, and NHL will help more than trying to memorize specific past puzzle answers.
