Football Odd One Out

How to play Football Odd One Out

The rules fit in a breath: four names, three of them quietly linked, one impostor, one tap to catch it. What makes it worth a minute is that the link is never named. It might be "all Argentine", "all centre-backs", "all won the Ballon d'Or" — you have to feel for it. Commit to a pick and the puzzle tells you straight away whether you were right, then finally spells out what the other three had in common.

A board we actually run: Casillas, Buffon, Neuer, Pirlo. Three of the finest goalkeepers of the past two decades, and then Pirlo, who won a World Cup of his own in 2006 but did it from deep midfield with that unhurried left foot, never once in gloves. He is the odd one. The connection shifts daily, which is half the fun of writing them. Some days it is as plain as which clubs sit in Serie A. Other days it is sly. The trap I see people fall into most is nationality dressed up as honours: asked which four countries have truly won the World Cup, someone always backs the Netherlands, who lost three finals and never quite got over the line.

The same board, everywhere, once a day

Everyone gets the identical puzzle, because we build it from the day's date rather than dealing out random ones. That is what makes the bragging work: when the board reads Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool and Real Madrid, you and the whole group chat are weighing up whether the Spaniards are the outlier at the same moment. It changes at midnight UTC, and once you have answered, that day's board is locked, so there is no retrying until the answer finally looks obvious.

Why the streak gets under your skin

A correct pick adds one to your streak; your games played and solve rate sit next to it, and none of it goes anywhere near a server. No account, no email, no sign-up. One wrong tap wipes the run, and so does forgetting to play for a day. I once binned a streak in the twenties on a careless guess, muttered something unprintable, and have guarded every run since. That, more or less, is the hook.

Three ways to protect a streak

I have hand-written a few hundred of these by now, and the same advice keeps proving itself.

• Work out the group before you hunt the odd one. The second you can say "these three are all Brazilian", the fourth has already confessed.
• Treat the famous name with suspicion. A Messi or a Ronaldo in the mix is usually there as bait, not as the answer.
• Stuck between two? Trust the plainer link. Every board turns on one clean, well-known fact, so if your theory needs three ifs and a maybe, bin it.

When you are done, keep the football going with our Daily Footy 5 quiz, the daily Guess the Footballer, a round of Football Connections, or browse every free football game.

Frequently asked questions