MetaFour

MetaFour gives the category before the clues, and that's the whole point of the game. At the top of the board a format constraint is displayed (for example, answers that have to contain the word "Down"), then eight cards each bearing a short definition, drawn from registers that have nothing to do with one another: an '80s song, a TV presenter, an official residence, a novel, a cartoon line, a film role. You must choose four: those whose answer fits the category. The selected card darkens, a PICKS bar of four segments fills, a row of four hearts labeled GUESSES faces it, and the central button counts down what's missing, displaying "Pick 3 more." after the first selection.

1. Read the day's category, shown in large text above the cards.
2. Solve the eight clues mentally: each points to an answer, title, name, or place.
3. Select the four whose answers fit the category: the card darkens and the central button counts down how many remain to choose.
4. Follow the round status under the button: the counter shows selections made out of four and the guesses remaining.

It's a trivia game that doesn't evaluate your knowledge but how you use it. Knowing who co‑hosted a given show is useless until you've looked at the answer itself, letter by letter, to see if it hides the day's constraint. This small gap between knowledge and its form makes the board much trickier than its eight cards suggest.

Selecting a card darkens it, fills one of the four segments of the PICKS bar and updates the line "1/4 selected · 4 guesses left." The row of four GUESSES hearts and the line "4 guesses left" display the number of guesses; the game does not state what a failed guess costs.

Daily Puzzle

One category, eight clues, four cards to designate, four guesses. The board shows the date at the top of the page.

PAST PUZZLES

A link at the top of the page leads to puzzles from previous days.

• Read the category before the cards, never the other way around: it completely changes how you read a clue, since it is not the subject of the clue that matters but the form of its answer.
• Each card is played in two stages: find the answer, then check it against the category. A clue you solve in a second is not necessarily a card to select; it's often the trap.
• The eight cards deliberately cover unrelated domains: music, TV, film, literature, history. Don't look for a thematic thread between them; there isn't one.