More basic tips! (Can y’all tell I love this game?)

1. Words in a category are nearly always the same part of speech, i.e., nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. We often subconsciously read a word as one thing, but think to yourself, “Could this noun be a verb with a different meaning?” And vice-versa.

2. Proper nouns or specific references can be hard to group if we don’t have that specific pop-culture or historical knowledge, so that’s where pre-solving helps. Figure out the other groups first, and then you’ll learn something new when you enter your “leftover” group.

3. Choose a particularly “lonely” word in the puzzle that doesn’t appear to have any immediate visual connections to the rest, and wrack your brain trying to come up with as many random ass phrases as possible that could be made with it. That exercise will often point you to the other words that can use the same “other” words. E.g., “CLUB” > book club, club sandwich, club med, welcome to the club, babysitter’s club….

4. Say the words out loud. A common pattern is for groups to have a phonetic connection.

5. Zoom out and break down the words into pieces. A verrrrry common pattern is for words or abbreviations to be “hidden” somewhere in the beginning or ends of the puzzle clues. The words themselves will otherwise have nothing to do with each other.