Sort 16 words into four hidden groups of four. A new daily puzzle, an archive of earlier days, unlimited practice, hints and a colour-blind-safe board. Stats stay in your browser.
Word Groups is a free word puzzle in which you sort 16 words into four hidden groups of four, and each group shares one connection. Tap four words that you think belong together and press Submit. If all four are right, the group locks in as a coloured band with its connection written on it. If three of the four are right, the game tells you that you are one away. Anything else is a plain miss. Every wrong submission costs one of your four mistakes, and the round ends when you find all four groups or run out of mistakes. A guess you have already tried is refused and costs nothing. Shuffle mixes the words that are left, Deselect all clears your picks, and the menu has a Hint that names the connection of one group still hidden. On a computer the arrow keys move between words, Space or Enter picks a word, and Escape clears your picks.
Each puzzle holds one group of each level. Level 1 is Straightforward, level 2 is Moderate, level 3 is Tricky and level 4 is Devious. The easy groups are usually plain categories such as planets or cheeses. The harder groups ask for a pattern: words that take the same missing word (___fish gives goldfish, swordfish, catfish and starfish), words that hide a smaller word (LISTEN, OFTEN, KITTEN and SOFTEN all hide TEN), words that sound like other words (BEE, SEA, PEA and JAY sound like letters), anagrams, silent letters and rhymes. Puzzles also contain red herrings, which are words that look as if they belong to a group they do not. Each band shows a shape and a number as well as a colour: a circle 1 in teal, a triangle 2 in coral, a square 3 in purple and a diamond 4 in charcoal. A missed group at the end of a lost round is drawn with diagonal stripes, so the board works if you cannot tell the colours apart.
The daily puzzle comes from a bank of 120 hand-written puzzles. The bank is shuffled once, and the shuffle is fixed, so every player with the same date gets the same puzzle and a puzzle cannot return until all 120 have been used, about four months. The day is your device's local date, such as 2026-10-22, and puzzle number 1 is 2026-01-01. Archive lets you play any of the last 60 days you missed, and marks the ones you have solved. Practice deals a random puzzle from the whole bank and never touches the daily puzzle. A round in progress is saved, so you can close the tab and carry on. The Stats panel shows games played, win percentage, current streak, best streak (for the daily puzzle, days in a row on the calendar) and a histogram of how many games you won with 0, 1, 2 or 3 mistakes. The daily puzzle keeps its own streak, and Archive and Practice share a second set of numbers, so replaying old puzzles cannot break or inflate your daily streak.
Every puzzle was written by hand for this page, not copied from a newspaper or another game. Each one has four groups of four words, no word appears twice in a puzzle, and each word is meant to fit only its own group. Red herrings are allowed, but a word that really fits two groups is treated as an error and removed. The connections are chosen for a worldwide adult audience: common words, no brands, no politics and no trivia that only one country would know. Spelling is British in a few places, for example colour and metre. This is an independent game with its own rules text, palette and puzzles; it is not connected to any newspaper or other word game. Please tell us if you find a word that fits two groups.
After a round, Copy result puts a short text on your clipboard: the title with the puzzle number and your mistakes, such as Word Groups #295: 1 mistake, then one row per guess. Each row uses the circled numbers 1 to 4 for the level of each word you picked, so a row of four identical numbers was a correct group. The text never contains the words or the connections, so you can post it without spoiling anything. Your settings, your round in progress and your statistics are saved in this browser's local storage and are never sent anywhere; no account is needed. The page counts visits, never your picks. Clearing your site data removes everything. The Reset these stats button in the Stats panel clears only the numbers and chart of the mode you are viewing (Daily, or Archive and Practice); your settings, rounds in progress and the other set of stats stay.
Pick four of the 16 words that share a connection and press Submit. A correct group locks in with its connection shown. You can make 4 mistakes. If three of your four are right, the game says you are one away. Find all four groups to win.
It means three of the four words you submitted belong to the same group and one does not. It still counts as a mistake, so you have 3 left after the first one. Swap one word and try again; a set of four you already tried is refused without a penalty.
Yes. The puzzle is chosen from the 120 in the bank by your device's local date, for example 2026-10-22, so anyone with that date gets the same puzzle. Around midnight, people in different time zones can be a day apart. Practice never changes the daily puzzle.
Yes. Open Archive and choose any of the last 60 days. Solved days are marked. Archive results count towards the separate Archive and Practice statistics, so they never change your daily streak.
No. Copy result shares only the puzzle number, your mistakes and one row of circled numbers 1 to 4 per guess, such as ①①①② for a guess with three level 1 words and one level 2 word. It has no words, no connections and no link.
Yes. Each level has a shape and a number as well as a colour: circle 1 teal, triangle 2 coral, square 3 purple and diamond 4 charcoal. The level name, for example Tricky, is written on the band, and a missed group is striped.