Word Groups: find the four hidden connections

How to play Word Groups

1. You see sixteen words. They belong to four secret groups of four.
2. Tap four words you think share a connection, then press Submit.
3. If all four belong together, the group is revealed with its name. If three of the four are right, you will see "One away".
4. You can make four mistakes. On the fourth, the remaining groups are shown.

Groups are colored from yellow (the most direct link) to purple (the trickiest, often wordplay). Your shared result shows the colors in the order you found them, without the words.

The kinds of groups you will see

Every Puzzlenest Word Groups puzzle is written from scratch for this site. Most groups fall into one of these types:

• Simple categories: planets, cheeses, dog breeds, shades of blue.
• Fill in the blank: words that make a phrase with the same word, such as ___BALL (foot, basket, snow, meat) or ___ TABLE (times, coffee, turn, pool).
• Hidden words: words that contain a smaller word, such as PHONE, OFTEN, WEIGHT and CANINE, which hide one, ten, eight and nine.
• Things that share an action: things that can be broken (a record, a promise, a heart, the news), or things that bounce (a ball, a check, an echo, light).

Strategy: how to solve without guessing

1. Read all sixteen words before you tap. Say each one in your head and note anything odd: a word that's also a name, a verb, or part of a phrase.
2. Look for the red herring. Most puzzles have five or six words that seem to fit an obvious group. If you can name five "dairy" words, one of them belongs somewhere else. Find the group that only works with four.
3. Solve the hardest group last. Lock in the groups you're sure of first. Fewer words left makes the wordplay group much easier to see.
4. Use "One away" carefully. It tells you three are right. Swap the word you were least sure of, not a random one.
5. Try fill-in-the-blank on leftovers. If four leftover words seem unrelated, try adding a word before or after each one: ___FLY, ___STONE, ___LINE.

A worked example

One of our puzzles includes MILK, YOGURT, CREAM, KEFIR and BUTTER. That's five dairy foods, so one is a red herring. The puzzle also has DRAGON, FIRE and HOUSE. Add "fly" to each and you get dragonfly, firefly and housefly, plus butterfly. So BUTTER belongs with the ___FLY group, and the dairy group is MILK, YOGURT, CREAM and KEFIR.

Daily puzzles and the archive

A new daily puzzle appears at midnight on your device and is the same for every player. We have written 70 original puzzles so far and add new ones every month, so the daily puzzle doesn't repeat. Missed one? Play every past daily puzzle, with the answers explained, in the puzzle archive. Want more tips? Read our guide on how to get better at word association puzzles.

Written and tested by the Puzzlenest editors. Every puzzle is reviewed before publishing so that only one way of grouping the words works. Updated November 1, 2026. How we make our puzzles