# Help me with this word puzzle?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-with-this-word-puzzle/683342>\
**Category:** The Game Room\
**Created:** [March 10, 2014, 9:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-with-this-word-puzzle/683342 "2014-03-10T09:39:16Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Wallenstein](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/b5a626/32.png) [@Wallenstein](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wallenstein)\
**Post date:** [March 10, 2014, 9:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-with-this-word-puzzle/683342/1 "2014-03-10T09:39:16Z")

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This quiz was sent to me by a friend - it’s from a UK brewing company’s weekly email and we’ve been struggling in the office to solve it.

There is a list of 16 items which can be grouped into 4 groups of four. Each group of four will have a coherent theme.

Cuaron  
Pounding  
Dwarves  
Orange  
Gaisford  
Year Itch  
McQueen  
Random  
Hyena  
T S Eliot  
Gold Dagger  
Deadly Sins  
Samurai  
Scorsese  
Magnificent  
O Russell

Some items might appear to fit into more than one category, but there is only one correct solution.

It’s meant to be done without google, but we’ve tried that so now we just want to work out the answers!

We’ve narrowed down three of the categories, but can’t figure out the final one; some of the categories appear obvious but more than four words fit so until the final category is sorted it’s hard to rule them in or out.

Here are my initial thoughts:

[spoiler]Theme 1 = Seven (Year Itch, Deadly Sins, Samurai, Dwarves, and maybe Magnificent)

Theme 2 = Literary Prizes (Orange, Gold Dagger, TS Elliot, Gaisford)

Theme 3 = Directors (Scorsese, O Russell, Cuaron, McQueen)

Which leaves Hyena, Pounding, Random and probably Magnificent but I cannot see what links them. [/spoiler]

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\
**Post date:** [March 10, 2014, 9:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-with-this-word-puzzle/683342/2 "2014-03-10T09:50:53Z")

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I got it.

It is “magnificent” in that last category. It is a wordplay category, unlike the others, which is most likely why it didn’t occur to you. Spend some time looking at those last four words and seeing if parts of them don’t jump out at you.

Hmm, that’s kind of oblique. Here’s another hint that’s a lot clearer if you want it:

There’s a reason why one of the words is an -ing word; it’s because if they didn’t use the -ing form, it all would’ve been way too obvious.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Wallenstein](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/b5a626/32.png) [@Wallenstein](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wallenstein)\
**Post date:** [March 10, 2014, 9:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-with-this-word-puzzle/683342/3 "2014-03-10T09:56:53Z")

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Got it! Thank you for the tip 🙂

In case anyone want to know:

They all have currencies in their name: Yen, Pound, Rand and Cent