What is Roster Relay?
Roster Relay is a sports trivia game that asks you to connect two players through teammates. Two players link when they appeared for the same franchise in the same season. The board displays a START player, a gap for your chain, and a FINISH player, with team and year chips showing each player's career stops. You can switch between MLB, NBA, and NFL in the header.
How to play Roster Relay
Enter a player who shared a franchise and season with the START player, then press ADD. A dark connector bar will appear between the cards and show the shared team season that confirms the link.
Keep adding players connected to your latest choice. The counter at the bottom shows the length of your route. When the FINISH card turns gold, you can link to it directly or extend the chain to raise your rarity score.
Scoring favors obscurity over speed.
The game scores rarity rather than efficiency. Each player you add receives a hidden rarity bar, revealed only after you commit. Higher numbers mean the name is less recognizable. Average Rarity divides the total by your number of links, while Total Rarity adds every individual bar together. The START player, FINISH player, and any repeated roster do not count toward your score. Wrong guesses carry no penalty.
Finishing is easy. To finish with a strong score, choose forgettable names instead of household stars. You cannot preview rarity while searching, so your only guide is your judgment about who played in the league without leaving much of a mark.
Available modes
The game offers three sports and an archive. The default MLB tab credits the MLB Stats API for roster data. NBA and NFL tabs in the header switch the chain to basketball or football. A link in the puzzle header loads prior days. All modes cover 1990 through the completed 2025 season and exclude ongoing seasons.
Tips for a higher rarity score
Use the team chips under each card as your planning layer. A journeyman who wore five uniforms opens more routes than a one-franchise legend, even if the legend is more famous.
Rarity stays hidden in the search box and only reveals itself once you lock in a player. You cannot shop for obscurity, so trust your instinct about who was forgettable rather than trying to game the system.
Reaching FINISH does not end scoring. Once the FINISH row turns gold, you can still extend the route. Repeated rosters score nothing, so avoid cycling back through the same team season.
Watch the data window. The rules exclude anything before 1990 or from incomplete seasons, so a bridge built on 1980s rosters will not resolve.
Common questions
How far back does the roster data go?
The How to Play panel states that roster and rarity data cover 1990 through the completed 2025 season, and that ongoing seasons are not included.
What happens if I give up?
The rules say Give Up ends today's game, and that players you already linked still count toward the community choice percentages.
How do I know why a link was accepted?
The dark connector between two cards names the shared team season that makes the link valid, so the game shows its working.