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The 16 words below may be partitioned into 4 groups.
Additionally, there is a four-letter word which can be placed into all four groups.

ARROW ATONE BURN DEALT
DISTRESS FELT HIP LAND
MAGMA MAGNET POKER PROFESSOR
SAG SOY TEA WOOD

Can you identify the four groups?
What is the word that can be placed into any group?

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1 Answer 1

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This was a tricky one to tie up all the loose ends, but I think I finally have it...

...BEAT!

Each of the connecting groups exhibits:

a different type of wordplay before you can find the answers.

As follows:

Group 1: DEALT, HIP, MAGMA, TEA
Anagrams of Greek letters: DELTA, PHI, GAMMA, ETA

Group 2: BURN, FELT, LAND, WOOD
Words that can follow 'HEART' to make a new word: Heartburn, Heartfelt, Heartland, Heartwood

Group 3: ARROW, MAGNET, PROFESSOR, SAG
X-Men characters missing a letter: (M)ARROW, MAGNET(O), PROFESSOR (X), SAG(E)

Group 4: ATONE, DISTRESS, POKER, SOY
One-word Robert De Niro films with the first letter changed: (S)tone, (M)istress, (J)oker, (J)oy

And the 4-letter word that can fit in all these categories? I told you already!

It's BEAT!

- An anagram of BETA;
- Follows 'HEART' to make 'HEARTBEAT';
- Add an 'S' to make the X-Men character BEA(S)T;
- Change the first letter to 'H' to make the Robert De Niro film, Heat

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  • $\begingroup$ All correct, really well done! $\endgroup$
    – hexomino
    Feb 3, 2022 at 8:36
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    $\begingroup$ @hexomino It was a hard one! My solving order is as presented in the question. The first two groups (and overall answer) fell fairly quickly but the last two took me a lot of head-scratching! :) $\endgroup$
    – Stiv
    Feb 3, 2022 at 9:44

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