The daily puzzle looks like sixteen loose clues. It is really four groups of four in disguise, arranged so the obvious reading is usually a trap. Here is how to take it apart.
Sixteen tiles, four hidden categories, four tiles each. The categories are ranked by difficulty and color-coded — Easy, Medium, Hard and Hardest — with a legend on screen the whole time. You get four mistakes before the game ends, so a blind guess is expensive.
The first grouping you notice is the one the puzzle wants you to notice. Resist it. Lock in the category you are sure of first — four tiles that can only go together — and set the tempting-but-shaky ones aside. Confidence, not recognition, is what you submit.
The difficulty lives in tiles that could plausibly sit in two or three groups at once. Before you submit, ask of every tile: what else could this belong to? A player's name might fit a team, a draft class and a record list all at once — only one of those is her real home on this board. Decoys are placed on purpose.
Because every tile belongs to exactly one category, you never have to solve the last group — you can back into it. Clear the three you can see and whatever remains is the fourth category by default, even if you cannot name the connection until it locks in.
A wrong guess that leaves you one away is a gift: three of your four are right, so swap a single tile rather than rebuilding the whole group. When you are stuck, Shuffle rearranges the board and often breaks a fixed way of seeing it, and a hint reveals a clue to the easiest unsolved category — a nudge toward the connection, not the tiles themselves.
Over time you learn the puzzle's favorite kinds of groups: teammates on one roster, members of a single draft class, holders of a particular record or milestone, players who wore the same jersey number, alumnae of the same college, or award winners. Naming the type of category you are looking at is often the whole battle. Want the basics first? See how to play.