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Pick the Daily Puzzle, or jump into a Fresh Puzzle for a new set any time.
🟨 Starter group • 🟩 Getting warmer • 🟦 Tricky group • 🟪 Fiendish group • Four mistakes end the puzzle • A fresh daily set lands every day
A connections game you can play right here, free, as often as you like. This is Word Groups, an original GameOLL word puzzle. Sixteen word tiles hide four groups of four. Every group shares one hidden category: things you find on a farm, shades of a colour, or four words that can all follow the same word. Pick four tiles that belong together, press Submit, and a right group locks in with its name revealed.
The catch is the mistakes. A wrong four costs you one of only four mistakes, so every guess matters. Play the Daily Puzzle for the set everyone gets today and build a streak, or open a Fresh Puzzle for a brand new set from our bank of 120 puzzles, written by GameOLL. No download. No sign-up. No one-puzzle-a-day limit.
Genre
Word · Puzzle
Players
1 Player
Platform
Browser · Mobile · PC
Price
Free
In this guide
- How to play
- How the difficulty tiers work
- Daily Puzzle and Fresh Puzzle
- 7 tips for finding the groups
- Word Groups FAQ
- Final verdict
How to play Word Groups
The rules take ten seconds to learn. The fun is in spotting what four words quietly share.
- Press Daily Puzzle for the set everyone gets today, or Fresh Puzzle for a new set from the bank. Sixteen word tiles appear in a grid of four by four.
- Tap four tiles that you think belong to one group. Picked tiles light up purple. Tap a picked tile again to put it back, or press Deselect to clear all four.
- Press Submit. A right group jumps to the top of the board, coloured by its difficulty tier, with its category name shown. The twelve tiles left behind now hide three groups.
- A wrong four costs one mistake. The four dots under the board show your mistakes: four used dots end the puzzle. If three of your four words belong to one group, the game tells you that you are one away, so you can fix the odd one out and try again.
- Find all four groups to win. Run out of mistakes and the puzzle ends, and the groups you missed are revealed at the top so you can see what they were. Press Shuffle any time to mix the tiles; your picked tiles stay picked.
Controls for phone and PC
| Action | Phone / tablet | PC / laptop |
|---|---|---|
| Pick or unpick a word | Tap the tile | Click the tile |
| Submit your four | Tap Submit | Click Submit |
| Mix the tiles up | Tap Shuffle | Click Shuffle |
| Clear your picks | Tap Deselect | Click Deselect |
| Sound on or off | Tap the speaker button | Click the speaker button |
| See the rules again | Tap How to play | Click How to play |
How the difficulty tiers work
Every set holds one group of each tier. The colour tells you how sneaky the link is, and the colour is only revealed when you find the group, so a hard group hides among the easy ones until you crack it.
| Tier | Colour | What it feels like | Example style |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tier 1 · Starter group | Yellow | The link jumps out at once | Plain sets, like farm animals or colours |
| Tier 2 · Getting warmer | Green | You need a second look, then it clicks | Sets with a narrower theme, like types of pasta |
| Tier 3 · Tricky group | Blue | The link is real but hidden in plain sight | Words that share a hidden feature, like things with a lock |
| Tier 4 · Fiendish group | Purple | Wordplay. Most players find this one last | Four words that can all follow one word, like FIRE: fly, place, work, truck |
The tiers are also why red herrings work. A word can look like it belongs to an easy group and really be part of the fiendish one. FLY sits near the insects, but in its set it belongs with the words that follow FIRE. When a group looks too neat, check whether one word is doing double duty.
Daily Puzzle and Fresh Puzzle
Daily Puzzle is the shared ritual. Everyone who plays on the same day gets the same set of sixteen words. Win it and your streak grows by one. Lose it, or skip a day, and the streak starts again from zero. Your best streak is saved, so there is always a record to chase. If you close the page mid-puzzle, your picks, your found groups and your mistakes are saved, and the puzzle is right where you left it when you come back.
Fresh Puzzle is the unlimited mode, and it is the big difference here. Every press deals a new set from the full bank of 120 puzzles, written by the GameOLL team. There is no one-a-day lock and no waiting for tomorrow. Fresh Puzzle wins and losses count toward your played games and your win rate, but they never touch your daily streak. Use it to train, to race a friend on the same set count, or just because one puzzle was not enough.
After every game, win or lose, the board shows your guesses in order: one row of four coloured squares per guess, painted with the tier colours of the groups those words really belong to. It is a quick, honest picture of how you played: clean rows mean clean groups, and mixed rows show exactly where the red herrings caught you.
7 tips for finding the groups
- Scan for the strange ones first. Odd words with only one or two possible homes often anchor a group. Place them, then look for their three partners.
- Say the words with partners. For the fiendish tier, try each word after a common lead word: fire, blue, black, sun, book. If four words click behind the same lead, you found the purple group.
- Count to five before you submit. If you can name five words that fit one idea, the idea is too loose, or one word is a red herring planted from another group. Tighten it to the four that fit best.
- Protect your mistakes early. Your first two guesses are your cheapest lessons. Guess the group you are most sure of first, never a coin flip, because the board only gets clearer.
- Use one away as a scalpel. One away means exactly one word is wrong, not that the idea is wrong. Swap one word at a time, and keep the three that feel welded together.
- Shuffle when you stall. A fresh layout breaks the fake links your eyes invented. Words that keep landing next to each other are not a group, they are just neighbours.
- Save the wordplay for last. Plain groups leave the board fast and shrink the puzzle. The purple group is much easier to see with only eight or twelve tiles left, so clear the honest groups first.
Is Word Groups free and safe to play?
Yes. The game is free. It runs fully inside this page. It asks for no name, no email and no account. It installs nothing on your device. Your stats, your streaks and your saved daily puzzle stay in your browser only.
Word Groups is an original game made by GameOLL. All 120 puzzle sets in the bank were written by our team for this game, with common, family-safe words and fair, checkable categories. If you spot a group you think is unfair, tell us in the comments and we will look at it.
More games and guides on GameOLL
- Want every game in one place? Visit our Play Games page.
- Love word puzzles? Play Word Guess, our wordle game.
- Hunt hidden words instead: play Word Search Quest, our word search game.
- Prefer numbers to letters? Play Sudoku Master, our sudoku game.
- Test your fingers after your brain: try the Typing Speed Test.
- Take a board game break with Checkers Master, our checkers game.
Word Groups FAQ
Is Word Groups free to play?
Yes. Word Groups is 100% free. You play it right on this page, with the daily puzzle and unlimited fresh puzzles. There is no download, no sign-up and no payment.
How many mistakes do I get?
Four. A wrong group of four costs one mistake, and the dots under the board track them. Find all four groups before the fourth mistake to win. If three of your four words belong to one group, the game tells you that you are one away, and the guess still costs a mistake.
Where do the puzzles come from?
Every set was written by the GameOLL team for this game. The bank holds 120 original sets, each with four categories and sixteen common, family-safe words. The daily puzzle picks one set by date, and Fresh Puzzle deals from the whole bank.
Can I play more than one puzzle a day?
Yes. The Daily Puzzle is one shared set per day, but Fresh Puzzle is unlimited. Press it as often as you like and a new set of sixteen words appears every time, with no waiting and no lock.
How do streaks work?
Win the Daily Puzzle and your streak grows by one. Win it again the next day and it grows again. Lose the daily puzzle, or miss a day, and the streak resets to zero. Your best streak is saved in your browser. Fresh Puzzle games never change the streak.
Can I play Word Groups on my phone?
Yes. The four by four grid is built for portrait phone screens. Tap tiles to pick them and tap Submit to guess. It also works with a mouse on laptops and desktop PCs, and the game saves your stats and streak in your browser.
Final verdict: should you play Word Groups?
Yes — if you like a connections game with real tension and no daily limit. Word Groups is free, instant and honest: sixteen words, four hidden groups, four mistakes. The daily set gives you the shared ritual and the streak to protect, and Fresh Puzzle removes the one thing players always ask for, the wait until tomorrow. Your record saves between visits, and the coloured guess grid shows exactly how you played. Find the four groups, and mind the red herrings.
▶ Play Word Groups 🎮 See All Free GamesLast updated: November 5, 2026. Word Groups v1.0 — the first release of our original word grouping game, with a daily puzzle for everyone, unlimited fresh puzzles from a bank of 120 sets written by GameOLL, four difficulty tiers, streaks and full stats. An original GameOLL browser game. Found a bug? Tell us in the comments and we will fix it in the next version.
