Guide
How to play Clusters
Clusters hides four categories of four words in a 4×4 grid, and Unlimited can push that to five or six groups. Select a set of four and submit it. A wrong submit costs a strike and you have only a few, so the words that could belong to two groups are the ones to leave until last.
Rules
- Submit four words that share a category — Tap four tiles, then Submit. A correct group locks with a color banner. Daily boards hide four groups of four.
- Four mistakes max on a daily — You cannot keep guessing forever. Each wrong submit costs a strike. Four strikes ends the daily and reveals what is left.
- Read “one away” as a warning — Three correct plus one impostor is the classic trap. Break the set instead of donating another strike.
- Do not force a leftover purple early — You cannot treat every strong theme as the hard group. Yellow is usually unique vocabulary; purple often uses a second meaning.
Tips
- Yellow first — The straightforward group is usually unique vocabulary. Lock it to shrink the leftover soup.
- Beware the trap overlap — Three words that feel like a theme plus one impostor is the classic purple bait. If you’re “one away,” break the set.
- Save purple — The trickiest group often uses a second meaning. Solve the other three, then reread what’s left.
- Don’t donate mistakes — Four strikes is the whole budget. Skip a shaky four and look for a cleaner yellow/green lock.
Where it comes from
The connecting wall from BBC’s Only Connect, first aired in 2008, asked players to sort sixteen clues into four groups against the clock. Turning that into a daily word grid with a fixed strike limit and colour-coded difficulty is what made the format stick. Clusters is Coronet Arcade’s take on it.
How it differs from similar puzzles
The daily uses sixteen words, four groups, and a strike limit. Clusters Unlimited adds five- and six-group boards, which change the maths considerably — more overlap between categories and far less room to guess. Broadcast connecting walls allow more cryptic groupings than a daily can fairly ask for.
Also known as
Also known as a connecting wall, word grouping, quartets, or four groups of four. Clusters is the arcade title.
- Connecting wall
- Word grouping
- Quartets
- Four groups of four
- Category sort