Random Mode Keyboard shortcut: Command/Ctrl + Shift + R
thumbnail

Category Elimination - Words #2

In each group, name any answer which matches the first category to reveal the second category, then name any answer which applies to both categories to reveal a third, and so on.
# = the number of answers possible. Answer must correspond to the highlighted yellow box.
Using any valid Scrabble word from the TWL06 word list used in official Scrabble tournaments. More info here. Search the word list here.
*a palindrome is a word that reads the same forwards and backwards
Quiz by Stewart
Rate:
Last updated: March 2, 2022
You have not attempted this quiz yet.
First submittedMarch 2, 2022
Times taken57,738
Average score65.0%
Rating4.27
4:00
Enter a word here
0
 / 20 guessed
The quiz is paused. You have remaining.
Scoring
You scored / = %
This beats or equals % of test takers also scored 100%
The average score is
Your high score is
Your fastest time is
Keep scrolling down for answers and more stats ...
Green Categories
1573
Any word containing GH
576
... which is at most 8 letters long
119
... which ends in T
35
... which contains an O
1
... and begins with G
Ghost
 
Orange Categories
681
Any 5 letter word starting with C
208
... which ends in a vowel
15
... which contains a second C
7
... which is plural
1
... which are commonly green
Cacti
Blue Categories
107
Any palindrome* word
reads the same forwards and backwards
39
... with at least 5 letters
13
... which contains the letter A
3
... which starts with an S
1
... and is worth 5 points in Scrabble
Stats
 
Purple Categories
1492
Words with U but not A, E, I and O
1140
... which doesn't contain a Y
36
... which starts with R
16
... which is 4 letters long
1
... and commonly appears after Gold
Rush
+10
Level 84
Mar 3, 2022
These are so great. Love to see more word based quizzes and the clues and answers are so well chosen. Thanks!
+6
Level 68
Apr 20, 2022
They are great, but much too tight on time for me.
+28
Level 77
Mar 3, 2022
Somehow I came up with ghost as my gh word. It was super fun when it worked fives times!
+1
Level 37
May 21, 2022
same
+1
Level 50
Jul 13, 2022
I first tried ghoul, then it turned into ghost
+1
Level 24
Oct 4, 2022
Same, and stats was my second guess
+1
Level 19
Mar 28, 2024
Same! I feel like ghost is a very common word, especially when compared to some other words with GH in them, at least for me.
+2
Level 75
Mar 4, 2022
Is Y considered a vowel here? Curry works for the second answer in Orange which indicates that it is but the second category in Purple shows that it is not considered one.
+1
Level 68
Mar 4, 2022
I didn't want to originally, but almost all had Y at the end which indicates it is being used as a vowel. Since it didn't affect the final answer I felt it was okay to include them as additionals.

For Purple, that's exactly why I made the second clue what it is.

+7
Level 76
Mar 4, 2022
Y is neither a vowel nor a consonant, it's just a letter, not a sound. It can represent either a vowel or a consonant, depending on the word.

I know that's not very helpful to answer your question, sorry. Just a pet peeve of mine. Letters != sounds

+4
Level 77
Mar 4, 2022
Yes, this is true. Vowels are defined by whether they are part of the vowel sound when you clap them out. For curry, you have a syllable from the u and the y, so they're both vowels. For "yurt", the y is a consonant. In reality, I would think yurt is the only word actually excluded in the second step of purple... there's probably some odd words I'm not familiar with, but yeah...
+1
Level 67
Mar 11, 2022
yup
+2
Level 60
Apr 20, 2022
Well, there's a tree that shares its name with a country in Europe... I mean Asia... wait no, Europe...
+1
Level 83
Jul 18, 2022
The tree is not spelled the same as the country and doesn’t contain the letter u.
+1
Level 20
Mar 5, 2022
bruh same hahah
+1
Level 53
Nov 29, 2023
"Y" represents a vowel sound at the end of "curry", so it makes sense that that would be an acceptable answer for that level of the orange box.

But the purple box doesn't say anything about the difference between vowels and consonants. It's only telling you that certain letters are acceptable / not acceptable.

+7
Level 79
Mar 4, 2022
It appears the plural form of cocoa is also cocoa. At least most commonly
+2
Level 68
Mar 4, 2022
This one I was unsure of, after further research it does appear to be the case, yes.
+2
Level 58
Apr 20, 2022
Are you saying cocoa is a count noun?

"How many cocoa do you have?"

"I have 3 cocoa!"

I don't think so.

+5
Level 81
Mar 4, 2022
Got stuck on Croci being a valid answer, at least when not flowering.
+2
Level 68
Mar 4, 2022
Yep this was the inclusion of "commonly", since generally Croci are not known for being green, but white, purple and yellow :)
+3
Level 75
Mar 4, 2022
Great quizzes, keep them coming please!

Is "salas" not in the scrabble dictionary, for the blue category? It's in Collins, which is apparently the British counterpart. I only tried it because I almost got the orange category with a Spanish-origin word too.

Wouldn't it be better to use a searchable/checkable wordlist BTW? I found the link in the instructions more confusing than clarifying.

+2
Level 68
Mar 5, 2022
Salas is not no, I updated the caveat to include a word finder as well. The site used defaults to TWL06 when searching, so should be good to use.
+1
Level 60
Mar 4, 2022
Any chance Nauruan could be added as an answer for the palendromes?
+4
Level 68
Mar 5, 2022
Proper noun
+3
Level 58
Apr 20, 2022
Nauruan isn't a proper noun - it's an example of a common noun spelled with a capital letter. It can also be an adjective (also spelled with a capital letter).

However, in order to avoid confusion and arguments, Scrabble at some point changed the rule from "no proper nouns" to "no nouns spelled with a capital letter". This meant that the very useful Scrabble word "Iraqi" (also a common noun and an adjective) was no longer acceptable.

+1
Level 69
Mar 5, 2022
Purple #3 accepted ruby which, having a y, shouldn't qualify.
+5
Level 68
Mar 5, 2022
It accepted "rub" not "ruby", since it happens before the y is typed it means it works
+7
Level 87
Mar 5, 2022
Is "stats" really a word on its own, or just a short way of saying "statistics"?
+3
Level 80
Mar 5, 2022
That annoyed me too, but blame the Scrabble people since they came up with dictionary used as the quiz reference.
+3
Level 68
Mar 5, 2022
According to Dictionary.com it's been in common usage since the 1950s
+1
Level 56
Nov 29, 2023
Hmm... dictionary.com contains a lot of things that aren't words! To be fair Collins dictionary has it, but only as an American word
+4
Level 66
Mar 6, 2022
Agree. It would never have occurred to me that stats might be an acceptable answer.
+6
Level 68
Mar 20, 2022
A great opportunity to learn something!
+2
Level 76
Mar 6, 2022
Fantastic quiz! How long did it take you to make this? The idea of loading up 1573 type-ins for an answer is mind-boggling.
+2
Level 68
Mar 6, 2022
Gold rums could be correct too. Here in Caribbean we speak of gold rums and white rums
+4
Level 68
Mar 12, 2022
If it's only common in one small area of the world, I don't think it counts as being "common"
+1
Level 76
Mar 11, 2022
The easiest one pour moi still, yet the blues got me.
+2
Level 69
Mar 11, 2022
If a word is plural, then it should be "which are commonly green", not "which is commonly green".
+2
Level 68
Mar 12, 2022
Fixed
+1
Level 70
Mar 22, 2022
are cacao pods not green (before they ripen)
+2
Level 68
Mar 22, 2022
commonly
+1
Level 56
Apr 20, 2022
I am really unconvinced that "stats" is a word rather than just an abbreviation. Still, the all-knowing Scrabble hath spoken I suppose :-S
+7
Level 76
Apr 20, 2022
Eh, a lot of things we now consider their own words started out as abbreviations. Like, when's the last time anyone took a ride on an omnibus? Or in a taximeter cabriolet? Went to see a movi(e)ng picture, or the zoological gardens? Played a pianoforte? How often do people really use the full words "telephone," "refri(d)gerator," "advertisement," or "photograph"? Not many people send faxes anymore, but it's been a lot longer since anyone's sent a facsimile transmission. If you do the mathematics, you can actually count up quite a number of words like this.
+2
Level 56
Nov 29, 2023
That's true of course - there are approx 1000 of them (I have just made that stat up over a cup of decaf) - but if we think about it for half a sec it's clear that some are still just abbreviations, otherwise the Scrabble rule would be meaningless, wouldn't it? Deciding when an abbreviation becomes a 'real' word is, I suppose, nor really our dept - without a dictionary making it clear it's really just one person's perception vs another's.
+1
Level 67
Apr 20, 2022
Yeah, but one you get to that point, it's clearly s_a_s. "Stats" is the only answer that makes sense.
+1
Level 68
Apr 20, 2022
sus is a palindrome
+2
Level 56
Apr 20, 2022
went with #1 all the way
+1
Level 74
Nov 8, 2022
Same. OoooOOooooooOooo!
+2
Level 39
Apr 20, 2022
I miss Ghana in first category
+2
Level 48
Apr 20, 2022
"Stats" as a word, given that it is an abbreviation, is a stretch.
+2
Level 76
Nov 29, 2023
I commented in more depth on this upthread, but there are a ton of words that started as shortened versions of longer words: piano, bus, taxi, cab, math(s), phone, movie, etc.
+2
Level 45
Apr 20, 2022
Why aren't gaslight and gunfight accepted?
+2
Level 23
Apr 13, 2023
gaslight gunfight girlboss
+1
Level 67
Apr 21, 2022
Haha I'm literally in AP Stat class right now
+1
Level 34
Apr 22, 2022
All correct, I got cacti and ghost 1st time
+3
Level 61
May 3, 2022
Cucumber dosent work
+3
Level 68
May 3, 2022
It does not fit any of the categories
+1
Level 31
May 5, 2022
ghana would not work for me
+2
Level 68
May 5, 2022
I know it is surprising, but this is not a geography quiz! This is about actual words, not proper nouns.
+7
Level 44
May 17, 2022
Racecar isn't a palindrome?
+6
Level 42
May 17, 2022
I tried this as well. Apparently it's not an official scrabble word
+1
Level 42
May 17, 2022
I guessed Ghost before anything else lol
+1
Level 80
Jul 16, 2022
cycli??

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cyclus#:~:text=Latin%20cyclus-,Noun,cycle%2C%20or%20series%20of%20poems.

+1
Level 28
Jul 22, 2022
Great one, you're the first user author that I've pulled up a quiz list for and played one after another!
+6
Level 46
Aug 23, 2022
"racecar" should work for the first couple in blue section, but great quiz!
+4
Level 28
Nov 16, 2022
why doesn't race car work?
+1
Level 77
Jan 13, 2023
The plural of saga is sagas. "Sagas" should fit the criteria for the Blue Categories, yeah?
+2
Level 68
Jan 13, 2023
It does until the end, as G is 2 pts
+4
Level 23
Apr 13, 2023
why isn't racecar accepted for the palindrome question?
+2
Level 68
Apr 13, 2023
Race car isn't a single word according to Scrabble
+2
Level 56
Nov 29, 2023
I have to disagree with scrabble on this one. Racecar is THE palindrome. When any teacher talks about palindromes, it's always the FIRST example. Boo Scrabble
+1
Level 60
Aug 1, 2023
I thought Rust would be the Purple Category answer since I interpreted the fifth clue slightly differently. Although gold doesn't rust anyways.
+1
Level 49
Sep 8, 2023
no way for green i just typed ghost from the start and it kept working. also please change the 5th purple clue to make it clear that it should appear after gold in a word (my stupid brain thought of periodic table or smth)
+2
Level 44
Nov 29, 2023
It wouldn't let me use racecar in the palindrome category. Obviously it wasn't the answer or anything but I thought I'd mention it.
+1
Level 68
Nov 29, 2023
Race car is actually two words not one, according to Scrabble anyway.
+1
Level 35
Dec 1, 2023
Why in 5 letter word starting with c China works but any word with GH Ghana doesn’t?
+1
Level 68
Dec 1, 2023
ghana is not a word, Ghana the country is a proper noun and so not considered a word in Scrabble.

china is a word on it's own, referring to fine pottery like plates and mugs, which can be described as "fine china". It may have derived from the country China, but it is a word in its own right.

+1
Level 34
Dec 1, 2023
counterweight works in first category
+1
Level 34
Dec 1, 2023
until last last column
+1
Level 65
Dec 3, 2023
Quiz is broken. Doesn't accept lots of words for the purple section. Doesn't accept cuckoo for the double C bit.
+2
Level 68
Dec 3, 2023
Like what?

And Cuckoo can't work for 2 C's because it must have 5 letters according to the first clue of that colour.

+2
Level ∞
Dec 3, 2023
Quiz is broken Stewart. User can't just enter random strings of characters and get 100%.
+1
Level 68
Dec 3, 2023
Well, what is a word but an arbitrarily defined set of random characters in a particular order? Perhaps Bucko is onto something here...
+1
Level 54
Jan 1, 2024
Man I would’ve sworn that last one was rust! Stupid of me to associate metal to rust.
+1
Level 42
Jan 26, 2024
Lol I guessed ghost first try and it turned out to be the final answer 😆
+1
Level 24
Feb 27, 2024
racecar is a palindrome
+1
Level 47
Feb 28, 2024
does "racecar" count as a palindrome?
+1
Level 68
Feb 28, 2024
Scrabble's dictionary has race car as two words not one.