As the MLB hot stove heats up, there’s another daily challenge baseball fans are trying to solve: The Winfield Game.
Sharing a name with Dave Winfield – the only athlete ever drafted in the first round of the MLB, NBA, and NFL drafts – The Winfield Game is a free daily sports trivia puzzle. Each day’s answer is a current or former MLB All-Star, NBA All-Star, or NFL Pro Bowler from the Super Bowl era forward. Your job is to identify that player in as few guesses as possible.
If you’ve ever played Wordle, the structure will feel familiar. One puzzle per day, limited guesses, and feedback after each attempt that helps you zero in on the answer. The difference is simply the subject matter — instead of letters, you’re narrowing down decades, teams, positions, and accolades to uncover a single sports star.
You start by typing in any player. Each guess returns a set of clues: the decades they played, the teams they suited up for, their position, and key achievements. Those clues gradually narrow the field until you land on the correct player… or run out of guesses trying.
In the above example, a user first guessed Royce Clayton – a sneaky good starting player for The Winfield Game due to having played for 11 teams during his career. Clayton gave a match on sport and an indication the player played in Chicago, though not for the White Sox. And importantly Clayton did not match on the answer’s decades of play.
The next guess was Anthony Rizzo, which turned out to be a great choice. Rizzo gave matches on the Cubs and Yankees, but neither was the answer’s main team. Which led the user to guess correctly with one of this winter’s biggest free agents – Cody Bellinger.
If you get stuck, you can optionally burn a guess on a hint, which might reveal an extra team, decade, or award to help you zero in on the right name. After you finish, you’ll see your score, streak, and that day’s average across all players. Newly added, you can also check out your own Group Leaderboard.
New this winter: Group leaderboards
The Winfield Game is rolling out group leaderboards!
In addition to the leaderboard for the best lifetime average score and the Cal Ripken Jr. Ironman Streak Leaderboard, you can now create private groups and see how you stack up against:
- Friends and family
- Coworkers in the office pool
- Your fantasy league
- Discord / Slack communities
- Team-specific fan groups
Setting up a group is simple:
- Go to winfieldgame.com and create a free account (or log in).
- Start a new group and share the invite link with whoever you want to compete against.
- Everyone plays the same daily puzzle — but now you can see your group’s leaderboard and compare scores within your own circle.
Group leaderboards track performance over time, so a single lucky guess won’t carry you forever. Over weeks and months, the best puzzle solvers rise to the top… and even if you aren’t the best, you can still top the streak leaderboard for your group.
Other Insider Tips
If you are looking to put your best foot forward in The Winfield Game, here are some insider tips to help you get started:
- Learn a “glue guy” in every sport – someone who played for a ton of teams. Rich Hill and Edwin Jackson are great names to leverage in baseball, while Ish Smith (NBA) or Josh Johnson (NFL) could help in the other sports.
- Refine your starting player – multi-sport players like Deion Sanders and Bo Jackson will nail down the sport with just one guess, while players like Rickey Henderson or Ryan Fitzpatrick had long careers with several teams.
Play today
The Winfield Game updates daily at midnight EST, and group leaderboards are available for anyone who wants to track results with friends or colleagues.
