How to Play Categories Game Online: Tips & Tricks

Guest contributor: Tim K

Find yourself constantly making connections between things people say or things in your environment. Do you know what the words twill, dobby, and herringbone have in common? If so, we invite you to play Categories, an innovative and addictive word puzzle game.

But before you dive into this, we're here to provide you with tips on how to play categories, key tips for success, mistakes to avoid, and more. First and foremost, what's this game all about?

Categories is a puzzle game that tasks you with grouping sets of words together by what they have in common. Unlike word search games that require you to find words from jumbled letters or crosswords that require you to jot down your answers to tricky riddles, Categories gives you all the "answers" ahead of time. You have to figure out which answers are part of a set—and no, there are no hints whatsoever!

The first thing you need to know is that Categories is a level-based puzzle game with two modes: Daily Puzzle and 500 Levels mode.

Daily Puzzle is self-explanatory: every day, you have a new puzzle to solve.

500 Levels mode, believe it or not, is also self-explanatory. (Yes, there are really hundreds of levels). In either case, the gameplay is the same.

At the start of each level, you'll find yourself facing a grid (either 3 x 3, 4 x 4, or 5 x 5 depending on what you select). Each tile in the grid contains a word. Find sets of words that go together, click or tap on them, and hit submit to see if your answers are correct. When playing on a 3 x 3 grid, you will have three groups of three words to solve, and so on and so forth, with 4 x 4 and 5 x 5 grids.

Wondering what kind of commonalities you might be looking for? That's just the thing—you never know. Sometimes, words are grouped just because they have a certain number of "E" s in them (or any letter); other times, a group of words will reference different types of knots. As such, it's essential to keep an open mind and choose carefully—you only have so many wrong guesses until you lose.

We've pulled together some fast tips—and a few common missteps—to help you succeed in Categories.

Self-sabotage? Really? Yes, we recommend you intentionally lose your first round of Categories, but with an important goal: learning the game. Every time you lose a round of Categories, the game reveals all of the correct answers to you, including the answers themselves and why they belong together.

This is the single most important tip. For example, if you see "sweet" and "sour" on the board, your brain might automatically say, "Aha! We just need to find words like 'salty' and 'bitter' now." You look; alas, there are no other taste-related words on the board. Categories games are very good at sending your brain on a wild goose chase.

Yes, it's essential to take note of trends early on, but don't try to force the wrong answers into those trends if it just isn't there. This brings us to our next clue…

Especially when you find two or three words that seem to match, it can be tempting to focus on that trend for a while. But this will often lead you to waste time (the clock is running!).

Oftentimes, it's better to move on to a different word and build new categories. Do this enough, and you'll eliminate enough of the board that the first category you were working on solves itself.

This is a very crucial tip that can save you a ton of hassle, often making the difference between beating a level and going back to the drawing board. For example, if you're grouping answers into sets of four, and you have three answers that you are very confident in, but are iffy on the fourth, you must remember everything to know what to change in successive attempts.

It also helps greatly that Categories games will tell you when you are only one off from the correct set. After this happens, if you change one of your words, still get it wrong, and don't receive the "only one off" notification, then you changed the wrong word!

Did we just invoke painful memories from grade school grammar lessons? Never fear, we're not here to lecture. But if you need a quick refresher, a homonym is a word that has more than one meaning (without changing its spelling). For example, the word "felt" could refer to feeling something in the past tense or that green, kind of fuzzy material used on billiards tables.

So, why does this matter for Categories? Well, if you're assuming that the word "felt" refers to feeling in the past tense, even though Categories is using the other definition in this case, you won't know to pair felt with "turf," "gravel," and other words that have to do with surfaces and textures.

Are you chomping at the bit to jump in there and start flying through level after level of epic word puzzle action? Then, by all means, use your newfound knowledge and show us what you can do. Just don't forget to drop all your sneaky secret strategies in the comments for the rest of us to use. And when you need a little variety, we've got all the no-download, totally free racing games, trivia games, block games, and more you could ever want.