Quartets

How to play Quartets

Quartets gives you sixteen words and asks you to sort them into four groups of four. Every word belongs to exactly one group, and each group has something in common — they might all be fruit, all be chess pieces, all fit in front of the word BALL, or all hide an animal inside them.

What makes it a puzzle is that the groups overlap on purpose. A word that looks as if it belongs in one group often turns out to belong in another, and the obvious group of four is sometimes a group of five with a trap in it.

The rules

Tap four words you think belong together and press Submit. If all four are a group, they are taken off the board and the group's name is shown in its colour. If they are not, it counts as a mistake. Four mistakes and the puzzle is over, and the remaining groups are shown.

If three of your four words are right, the game tells you that you are one away. It does not tell you which word is the odd one out. Making the same guess twice is not counted against you.

The four colours

Every puzzle has one group from each of four levels, and the colour shows which level a group was once you find it.

• Yellow — straightforward. A list anyone would recognise: fruit, trees, farm animals.
• Green — needs a little knowledge. Chess pieces, Greek letters, card games, shades of blue.
• Blue — things in common. Words that go with another word, like SNOW, EYE and FIRE in front of BALL, or things that have keys, shells or scales.
• Purple — wordplay. The link is in the letters, not the meaning: words hiding a number, palindromes, words that spell another word backwards.

How to approach a board

• Look for the red herring first. If five words seem to fit one group, one of them belongs somewhere else. Work out which before you submit anything.
• Solve the tricky group last. Once three groups are found, the last four words are a group whether you can see the link or not.
• Read the words as letters, not meanings. When a group will not come, the purple group is usually the reason. Look inside the words for smaller ones.
• Shuffle. Words that sit next to each other start to look connected. The shuffle button breaks that up and often shows you a link you had walked past.
• Use "one away" carefully. It tells you three words are right, which narrows the options a lot — but swap one word at a time, or it will cost you another mistake.

The daily puzzle

Daily mode gives everybody the same sixteen words on the same day, with a new puzzle at midnight in your own time zone. Solving it adds to your streak. Running out of mistakes ends the streak.

Your result can be shared as a grid of coloured squares, one row per guess, so a friend can see how it went without seeing a single word. Free play deals a new board whenever you like and never touches the daily streak.

Why every board has one answer

Boards are built in your browser from a bank of about seventy categories, one from each level. Every category lists the words that can be used in it and, separately, other words that could fairly be argued into it. Wordplay categories use a rule instead, such as "contains a number".

Before a board is dealt, the game counts how many ways its sixteen words could be split into the four groups, using every word each group could possibly claim. If there is more than one way, the board is thrown away and another is drawn. So a word may look as if it fits two groups, and that is the point, but only one arrangement of the whole board works.

Common questions

How many mistakes can I make?

Four. The dots under the board show how many you have left. A guess you have already made is not counted a second time.

Can a word belong to two groups?

It can look as if it does, and that is deliberate. But every board is checked before it is dealt, and only one way of splitting all sixteen words into four groups works.

Is there a new puzzle every day?

Yes, at midnight in your own time zone, and it is the same for everyone. Free play gives you as many extra boards as you like.

Can I share my result without spoiling it?

Yes. The shared result is a grid of coloured squares, one row per guess, with no words in it.