has rapidly become a favorite on the internet since it was unveiled to the public a little over a year ago. The brainteaser was launched by in June of last year and has gone on to become the newspaper's second-most-played game behind , another word-based puzzle. If you have never played before, challenges players to uncover threads connecting a series of words.
Instructions on how to play the game are below. Clues and the answers for today's puzzle are toward the end of the article. tasks players with grouping 16 words into four categories based on association.
For example, the July 11 game linked the words "Pen," "Ruler," "Scissors," and Tape" under the category "School Supplies." Each of the four categories is labeled with a color, which also signifies their difficulty level. Yellow is the easiest category, followed by green, blue and purple.
However, the puzzles are rarely straightforward, using homophones and wordplay, among other techniques, to keep players challenged. However, the familiarity of the words used, and how often they pop up in modern life, are also difficulty factors, although less-common words aren't only used in the harder categories. "Item overlap," where one word can be linked to multiple categories, is another way tests players.
If stuck, players can hit the shuffle button, which will mix up where the words appear on the screen. Wyna Liu, a crossword editor at the who was asked to develop , recently told about her the game. "My best piece of advice is .
