You see SCARLET, MUSTARD, PLUM and BLUE, and you’re already reaching for the Submit button. Four colours, done. Except PEACOCK is sitting two tiles over, smirking. Now you have five candidates for four slots, one mistake on the board, and a creeping suspicion that this puzzle was written by someone who enjoys watching you squirm. It was.
The rules are short. Sixteen words hide four groups of four. Pick four you think belong together and submit. Find all four groups before you make four mistakes.
The board
Loading puzzle...
How to play
- Tap four tiles to select them, then Submit. Tap a selected tile again to drop it.
- A correct guess collapses into a coloured banner. Yellow groups are the most direct; purple groups are the most devious.
- A wrong guess costs one of your four mistakes. If three of your four picks belong together, you’ll see One away…
- Repeating a guess you’ve already tried is free, so experiment with combinations.
- Shuffle rearranges the tiles when your eyes start seeing the same false pattern. Name a Group reveals one group’s title, easiest first.
Stuck?
- Count the candidates. If five words fit a group, one of them belongs somewhere else. Work out which group could use the spare before you submit.
- Read words as parts of other words. Purple groups rarely mean the obvious thing. Try putting something in front of each word, or after it.
- Solve from the edges. Lock in the group you’re surest of first. Every solved group removes four tiles of noise.
Your progress saves on this device, including which groups you’ve found and how many mistakes you have left.
Sources
- Connections — The New York Times Games: the daily puzzle that popularised this sixteen-tile format.
- Cluedo — Wikipedia: Anthony Pratt’s 1949 board game, sold in North America as Clue, with its original suspects and weapons.
- Hercule Poirot — Wikipedia: Agatha Christie’s Belgian detective.
- Inspector Morse — Wikipedia: Colin Dexter’s Oxford detective.