What do word games, questionably existent fish, sorting puzzles, literary plot devices, and balloons have in common? The first four are all ways to describe a Red Herring, which happens to be a new game by Blue Ox Technologies (makers of the award-winning 7 Little Words). The balloons have nothing to do with the rest, they're just a red herring to throw you off, and they're exactly the sort of pitfall you'll need to avoid. In this deviously simple mobile game, you're given sixteen words, and all you need to do is sort them into three themed groups of four, with four unrelated words leftover.
Each column of the grid will represent one category, with the fourth column holding the "red herring" words when everything's done and dusted. Drag a word tile and drop it on another tile to swap them. When four categorically-matching tiles line up vertically, they'll lock into place, with the category revealed at the top. If you play in the game's hard mode, you'll have to figure out all of the connections on your own. In normal mode, the positions of five tiles are revealed for you, and the easy mode also gives you the category headings at the start. If you get stumped on a difficult level, you can always restart the level with an easier difficulty, or purchase additional hints (in the form of "X and Y belong in a group together").
Like the Connecting Walls from Only Connect (but somehow slightly more devious), there are words that could possibly fit into multiple categories, but there's only one way to sort the grid into three categorized groups and four definite outcasts. As a tip, use those overlapping words as a hint; if you make a confirmed group with four words, but see a fifth that should go into that category, it can't be a red herring, you know it must be the basis of another category (because if it were a red herring, it could be interchanged with any of the words in that group without consequence, invalidating the claim that there's only one unique solution). The base game comes with one puzzle pack of 50 grids for free (as well as ten free hints), with additional puzzle packs available as IAPs. Let yourself get hooked on a good puzzle and dive into Red Herring!
Heartbroken that this isn't available for computer users. Looks great!
Heartbroken that this isn't available in my country. :(
Have been playing this all night - the only problem I have is "Normal" mode is too easy and "Hard" mode is too hard! Although those times when you do get the solution is fantastic!
THIS IS AMAZING
Very nice. Scratches a particular brain itch.
This is awesome. I Love this game. It's like trivia meets puzzles.
Question is: What's purple, hangs on the wall, and sings?
A herring.
Being purple, hanging on the wall, and singing are a bunch of RED HERRINGS
Man, I will probably keep playing it anyway, but I was bugged when they said
A Gram is a unit of weight. This is wrong, it is a unit of mass.
I usually don't care too much but this one just bothered me.
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