States Connections

Sixteen states, four hidden categories, four states in each. Unlike a capitals quiz this one tests classification rather than recall: you have to know which states border Canada, which levy no income tax, which seceded, which touch the Mississippi. One board takes three to five minutes.

How to play

Press Start and a grid of sixteen state names appears in random order. Select exactly four you think share a category, then press Submit. A correct group locks in, turns a solid color, and its category label is revealed above the grid. A wrong group clears your selection and costs one of four mistakes. Four mistakes ends the board. Your score is groups solved out of four, so solving all four is three stars, three groups is two stars.

There is no timer and no penalty for deselecting, so nothing is lost by rearranging tiles before you commit. The game deals one of three boards at random. Each board uses four of the twelve categories below, and each has exactly one way to split its sixteen states into four groups.

Solve the closed lists first

Every category is a closed national list, and some of those lists are tiny. That is your opening move: find the category with the fewest members in the whole country, because on a board of sixteen it has the least room to hide.

Where boards trip you up

Each board plants red herrings: tiles that also fit a second category on the same board. Many states belong to several groupings at once. Washington borders Canada and levies no income tax. California borders Mexico and has a Pacific coast. Montana is landlocked and has no state sales tax. Virginia was one of the 13 colonies and joined the Confederacy. So a tile that fits your hunch is weak evidence. The strong move is to find the category that has exactly four candidates on the board, lock it, and let the leftovers decide the rest.

Two specific edges catch people. Border Canada is not just the northern tier you picture: Ohio and Pennsylvania both count through their Great Lakes water boundary, while Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Michigan, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Washington and Alaska make up the rest. And landlocked here means no ocean and no Great Lakes frontage, which is why Michigan, Illinois and Ohio sit outside the group of twenty even though none of them touches salt water.

The groupings behind the board

Several categories have their own pages: no income tax states, landlocked states and US regions. To drill any single category on its own: