Group Four

Updated by Darryl Waterhouse on 3 November 2026 7 min read

Put Group Four on your website. Sixteen words or short phrases hide four groups of four - fruit, planets, chess pieces, kinds of cake. Players pick four they think belong together; a right guess reveals the group, a wrong one costs a mistake. Fewest mistakes and the fastest time top the leaderboard. Group Four is a Pro Tool, and can be gifted to a site.

What it does

You write the puzzle. Four groups, each with a name (players see it once they find the group), a difficulty and four items.
Four difficulties, easiest to hardest: 1 Gentle, 2 Steady, 3 Tricky, 4 Devious. Each group has its own, so every puzzle runs from easy to hard, and each has its own colour - green, blue, amber and red, in the shades of your site's theme. You can rename them in the settings (the cog at the top of Group Four).
Two kinds of game:
- A single puzzle - one game for a page, played again as often as you allow.
- A daily set - a list of puzzles, one for each day from the first day, the same for everyone that day (a new day starts at midnight, in your site's time zone). Players build up streaks (days in a row solved), and can play earlier days for practice.
The puzzle is checked as you type. Exactly four groups of four; a name and a difficulty for each group, each difficulty once; every item different; no item in two groups; no word that is not allowed in a game.
A live preview beside the puzzle shows the groups in their colours, or the tiles dealt as your players will see them.
The groups stay on the server. A player's browser only ever gets the sixteen tiles, dealt at random, and each group once it is found. Nothing on the page says which tile is in which group - not the order, not the tiles' hidden names.
Mistakes allowed: 1 to 8 (4 unless you change it). On the last one the go is over. A daily set then shows every group; a single puzzle shows only the groups the player found (the rest stay hidden, so nobody can fail on purpose under one name to read them, then solve under another).
Close-call hint (on unless you switch it off): after a wrong guess with three of a group in it, players are told that three of the four belong together - never which three.
Shuffle button (on unless you switch it off) mixes up the tiles left, to see them afresh.
Leaderboards: fewest mistakes first, then the fastest. Today, this week, this month and all time, best go per name. A daily set's board is per day, and it can show the longest streaks instead.
Personal best on the finished screen, and a Share button: a few lines of numbers (the difficulty of each tile picked, a line per guess) that never give a word away.
Optional time limit, opening and closing times, and a limit on goes per name.
Keyboard and touch: the tiles are buttons. Tab to them, the arrow keys move between them, Space or Enter picks one, Escape clears the picks.
Animations - tiles pop in, a found group drops into place, a wrong guess shakes. Visitors who asked for less motion never see them.

Getting started

Switch Group Four on in Tools.
Open Tools > Games > Group Four and choose New game.
Give it a title. Leave What it is on A single puzzle, or pick A daily set.
Write the four groups: a name, a difficulty and four items each. The preview shows how it looks.
Press Test and play it yourself (see below).
Set the status to Open and save.
Put it on any page:

[group-four id="friday-puzzle" /]

Writing a good puzzle

Make a few items look as if they could go in more than one group - that is the fun. "Cup" could be a kind of cake or a trophy.
Keep items short: a word or two (32 characters at most).
Give the hardest group (Devious) the cleverest link: "words before BALL", "___ cake".
Test it on someone who has not seen it.

A daily set

Days lists every puzzle in day order: day 1 is the First day, day 2 the next, and so on. Click a day to write its puzzle. Add a day puts a new one at the end.
Right-click a day (or its ⋮) to move it earlier or later, or remove it. Shuffle the days to come mixes up the order of the days still to come.
A day someone has played is locked: its puzzle and its place stay as they are, and so do today and earlier days. Reset the plays first if you really must change one.
The editor shows when your puzzles run out, and warns when there are 7 days or fewer left.
Calendar (right-click the set in the list) shows which puzzle comes out on which day, with its groups and how many have played it. It shows every group still to come, so it needs the manage permission.
Everyone gets the same deal of tiles on the same day, so players can compare notes.
Earlier days (on unless you switch them off): players can play any earlier day for practice. It is timed, but never on the leaderboard or in a streak, and never counts against today's go.

Every setting

The game

Title - shown to players, and heads the Share text.
Short name - used in the shortcode. Made from the title when left empty.
Status - Draft (not shown anywhere), Open (playable), Closed (the leaderboard still shows, no new goes).
What it is - a single puzzle or a daily set. A single puzzle keeps day 1 only: the editor asks before anything goes.
Introduction - shown before a player starts.

The puzzle

Puzzle title - optional, shown above the tiles ("Monday mix").
Four groups - a name, a difficulty (1 to 4, each once) and four items each.

Rules and leaderboard

Mistakes allowed - 1 to 8.
Time limit (minutes) - out of time means off the leaderboard. 0 is no limit.
Goes each (per name) - a single puzzle: in all; a daily set: each day (1 unless you change it). 0 is as many as they like.
Leaderboard size and Leaderboard opens on - how many names, and which period shows first.
Opens and Closes - optional dates and times.
Close-call hint, Shuffle button, Show a leaderboard and Animations - on unless you switch them off.
Earlier days to play (daily sets) - on unless you switch it off.

Settings (the cog at the top of Group Four) - the names of the four difficulties, for every puzzle on the site. Leave one empty to go back to ours.

Testing a game

Test (in the editor, on each game in the list, and on its Plays screen) opens the game right there in the admin, exactly as your players will see it.

It plays the version you last saved. With unsaved changes the button says Save and test, and saves first.
It works whatever the status, so you can try a draft before anyone can see it. A daily set tests today's puzzle, or day 1's before it starts.
A test go is never saved to the leaderboard, is not in the Plays list, does not count towards anyone's goes and raises no notification. When you finish, it tells you where you would have come.

Shortcodes

The game, with its leaderboard below it:

[group-four id="friday-puzzle" /]

The game without its leaderboard, or the leaderboard alone where the game would be:

[group-four id="friday-puzzle" board="hide" /]
[group-four id="friday-puzzle" board="only" /]

The leaderboard anywhere else, for a period of your choice (today, week, month or all), with an optional limit and title:

[group-four-leaderboard id="friday-puzzle" period="week" limit="5" title="This week's champions" /]

A daily set's longest streaks still going:

[group-four-leaderboard id="daily" order="streak" /]

Plays and leaderboards

Plays (on each game) lists every go: the name, the mistakes (and the day, for a daily set) beside it, groups found, and the time. Hide takes a play off the leaderboard without deleting it (a rude name, a known cheat); Show puts it back. Reset the leaderboard… deletes every play of that game.

Moving games between sites

Export a game from its menu in the list (right-click it, or ⋮), or from the download button at the top of its editor. Export all puts every game in one file. The file holds the puzzles and settings, never who played them.

Import… at the top of the list adds the games in such a file to this site. Each arrives as a draft with no first day (pick one for a daily set), every puzzle is checked again, and a game whose short name is taken gets one of its own (friday-puzzle-2). Up to 50 games at a time.

Notifications

Group Four new best - someone has gone top of a single puzzle's all-time leaderboard, or solved a daily puzzle first that day with no mistakes.
Group Four daily set running out - an open daily set has puzzles for 7 days or fewer. Add more days.

The sidebar shows how many goes were finished today, lists a daily set that runs out soon, and warns when an open daily set has no puzzle today.

Gifting

Group Four can be gifted to a site by Domma, for good or for a number of days, like the other Games.