Brands & icons

Colour columns, and why they behave oddly

Most topics in this family grade you on a colour — flag colours, icon colour, logo colour, suit colour. Colour is unordered: red and orange are not neighbours, so a wrong colour never points a direction, it only removes one option. That makes colour a weak opening column and a great closing one. Early on, spend your guesses on country, category and price tier; save the colour reasoning for when you are choosing between two finalists.

Price tier is the exception — it is ordered, so a yellow there means one tier away, which on car and fashion brands is often the difference between two very specific shortlists.

National Flags

Continent, number of colours, main symbol (star, crescent, cross, circle, emblem, animal, none) and layout. It also runs as a picture reveal, so tiles peel back from the real flag while you guess — the fastest satisfying rounds in the game come from here. The symbol column is the one worth thinking about first: crescents, crosses and stars each map onto a short, geographically clustered set of countries.

Apps & drinks

Apps

Category (social, media, messaging, shopping, travel, money, work, games, tools, dating, AI), icon colour, headquarters country and age. Headquarters is more informative than it looks: the app world is concentrated in a handful of countries, so a red there eliminates most of the pool at once.

Soda & Drink Brands

Parent company, type (cola, citrus, energy, water, juice, coffee, tea, sports, beer, milk), colour and reach. Parent company is the expert's column — the global drinks industry is owned by a very short list of companies, and one green there usually leaves you five candidates.

Tech, cars and fashion

Household Tech Brands

Country, product range (phones, computers, appliances, audio, gaming, cameras, components, software), price tier and founding decade. Founding decade stretches back to the 1880s, which is the fact that trips everyone up — several of the biggest names in consumer electronics are older than the aeroplane.

Car Brands

Country, price tier, logo colour and type (mass market, sports, luxury, off-road, electric, trucks). Country and tier together are close to a unique key: pick the country you know best, guess its most famous marque, and read the tier arrow from there.

Clothing & Shoe Brands

Country, price tier, focus (sport, fashion, streetwear, outdoor, denim, fast fashion) and founding decade. The founding column reaches back to the 1770s here, so the ordered scale is long — a yellow is a genuinely narrow band, and worth chasing.