I got so hung up on the wrong idea I used up all my guesses on blue, and didn’t figure out purple in time.
I had zero idea of what the blue was but it was my last one.
Same. How are conch, helix, and rook parts of the ear?
Here ya go. Appears to be standard ear piercing terminology. Granted, it’s something I know nothing about, but I figured I’d look it up. Like everyone else so far, blue was my last category today.
I suspect that the red herring is often where the puzzle constuctor starts. Start with something like SEAN, ROGER, PIERCE, DANIEL, and then build a category around each of those.
I don’t think that having a category with five possible answers is a sign of a red herring. Four of them probably do form a category, but you could burn three wrong answers if you start guessing which four. I try to figure out which of the five could also be something else.
Today’s yellow was so obvious I was convinced it was a red herring but decided it couldn’t group with anything else so I guessed it. Sometimes you get these meta red herrings, but they may just be in my head. “Lions, tigers, bears, oh my”, was another puzzle like that.
There was a puzzle some time ago that was just four four word movie titles and I spent a long time just looking at the words because I had convinced myself that couldn’t be the answers but it was.
Sometimes I’ll bite the bullet and risk a guess on something I think might be a red herring. It might turn out to be correct. I might get the “one away” message; then I know I’m close but not right on the details. If neither of those, then it’s a true red herring and those four clues are probably four different categories.
Well, my first guess was to put ROOK in that category. And, as it turned out, that was a better fit than its correct category, IMO.
After solving today’s (took a while), I saw that a popular herring/pitfall was Bed Sizes — Twin, Double, Queen, King.
That called for a brow wipe; after resisting several other herrings, that one would likely have pushed me over the edge. Fortunately it hadn’t registered at all.
Ah, nice. I completely missed that possibility. So there was a red herring, it just depends on which grouping of four you saw first (which happens often enough.)
I fell for that red herring.
I tried to force
DNA Related: Double, Helix, Clone, Chain
and
Crenelated/Convoluted: Lobe, Rook, Snail …Conch?
but they were a pinch too fishy.
Joke for the kids /
Summary
photograph ejaculators
today with
Summary
glaze
as a red herring for
Summary
praise
Weird one today. I thought purple was the easiest and blue was second although I couldn’t find the fourth one.
Purple, Blue, Green, Yellow for me. And one of my quickest solves ever. Saw the first three almost immediately.
Maybe I am having a brain cramp but I have never heard Ice in the context of its answer today.
Me either. I commented this elsewhere and it was explained to me, but I couldn’t see any logic to it even then. It’s something to do with blocking an opposing team from progressing.
Very proud of getting purple third and not last today.
I got green and yellow right away today but couldn’t find any more. I even made a wrong guess that ended up being similar to blue but not completely correct. I set it aside for a few hours and finally got what a thought was a hail Mary for purple but it turned out to be correct. So also proud of myself for getting purple even though I never actually got blue.