How to play Associations

Associations is Stat!'s grouping game. The board holds sixteen clinical findings, and four hidden diseases each claim four of them. Find all four groups within twelve tries to win.

The goal

Sort the sixteen findings into four groups of four, where each group is the set of findings of one disease.

The board

The findings sit in a four-by-four grid. They are a mix of:

• symptoms, such as Epigastric pain,
• lab results, such as Calcium: Low or Glucose: High,
• vital signs and imaging, such as CT angiography: Abnormal,
• physical examination signs, such as Diminished dorsalis pedis pulse.

In the daily puzzle every disease has at least one examination sign, no finding appears twice, and each card belongs to exactly one disease on the board. Real medicine is messier: several findings might plausibly fit more than one of the diseases, and that is where the challenge lies.

Every player gets the same puzzle each day, but the cards are shuffled differently for each person.

Making a guess

1. Tap four cards to select them. You can select up to four at a time; Deselect all clears your selection.
2. Tap Submit. The button only works with exactly four cards selected.
3. Use Shuffle whenever you want a fresh look at the board. Rearranging the cards often makes a pattern jump out.

Every new combination you submit uses one try, right or wrong. Submitting a combination you have already tried simply tells you so, and costs nothing.

Feedback

• Correct: the four cards lock in the group's color with a tick, and a banner above the grid names the disease they belong to.
• One away: three of your four cards belong to the same disease. Swap one card and try again.
• Incorrect: fewer than three of your cards share a disease.

After a miss, the caption under the board shows how many tries you have left. The four group colors are simply labels; they do not indicate how hard a group is.

Hints

You get three hints per game, and they never cost a try. A hint picks the unsolved group that has had the fewest hints so far and reveals cards from it: two cards the first time that group is hinted, then one more each time after that. Hinted cards take on the group's tint and a hint label, so you know which cards belong together even before you solve the group. Because hints go to the least-hinted group first, your first few hints usually point to different groups.

Winning and losing

Solve all four groups to win. If you run out of tries, the unsolved groups are revealed so you can see which findings belonged together. The result screen lists the four diseases, with more information about each.

Strategy: how to solve the board

Start with the most specific finding. Scan the board for a finding that points strongly to one disease. A perianal fistula, for instance, suggests Crohn's disease much more than abdominal pain does. Build your first group around the most distinctive card.

Name the disease before you guess. Say to yourself which disease you think a group represents. It forces you to check that all four findings genuinely fit, rather than just looking vaguely related.

Watch for findings that fit two diseases. A low calcium could belong to acute pancreatitis, a parathyroid problem or kidney disease. When a card could go two ways, leave it until other groups are settled; the process of elimination often decides it for you.

Use "one away" wisely. It tells you three of your cards are right, not which three. Keep the three you are most confident about and swap the weakest link.

Solve the easiest group first. Each solved group removes four cards, which makes every remaining group easier to see. The last group is often free.

Save hints for a stubborn board. Because hints reveal two cards from a group at once, a hint on a crowded board can unlock a whole group.

Why it works as learning

Associations trains pattern recognition: seeing clusters of findings and recognizing the disease they describe. That is how experienced clinicians reach a diagnosis quickly, and it is a skill every medical exam tests. Our guide to classic clinical associations covers many of the pairings you will meet on the board.