How to play Traits
Guess a disease and six traits light up, green for exact, amber for partial, grey for a miss. Here are the matching rules and a strategy for closing in on the answer.
Traits is Stat!'s deduction game. There is a hidden disease, and every disease you guess is compared with it on six traits. Use what lights up to narrow the field and find the exact disease in 15 guesses or fewer.
The goal
Name the exact hidden disease. Each guess is one try, and you have fifteen.
The six traits
Every disease in Traits is described by the same six traits:
| Trait | What it describes | Possible values |
|---|---|---|
| System | The main body system involved | One of ten: Cardiology, Pulmonology, Gastroenterology, Nephrology/Urology, Endocrinology, Hematology/Oncology, Neurology, Rheumatology/Musculoskeletal, Infectious/Dermatology and OB-GYN |
| Type | The kind of disease process | Infectious, inflammatory, autoimmune, metabolic, endocrine, neoplastic, vascular, degenerative, structural, genetic, toxic or functional |
| Acuity | The time course | Acute, chronic or congenital, and some diseases have more than one |
| Organs | The organs mainly affected | For example lungs, or pancreas, blood vessels and kidneys |
| Diagnosis | How it is usually diagnosed | Clinical, labs, imaging, microbiology, biopsy or physiology (tests such as lung function or nerve studies) |
| Treatment | How it is usually treated | Meds, surgery, procedure, lifestyle or supportive care |
The game covers 250 diseases, 25 in each of the ten systems.
Our guide to organ systems, disease types and acuity explains what these categories mean in real medicine.
Reading the colors
When you guess a disease, a new row appears at the top of the board showing that disease's six traits. Each trait is marked by how well it matches the hidden disease:
- Green with a tick: an exact match.
- Amber with a wave: a partial match.
- Grey with a cross: no match.
Exact, partial and miss, precisely
Two traits, System and Type, hold a single value. They are either an exact match or a miss; they can never be amber.
The other four, Acuity, Organs, Diagnosis and Treatment, can hold several values. For those:
- Exact means the same set of values, in any order.
- Partial means at least one value in common, but not all of them.
- Miss means nothing in common.
So if your guess affects the lungs and the heart, and the hidden disease affects only the lungs, Organs turns amber. If your guess affects only the kidneys, it turns grey.
A green row is not always a win
Some diseases share all six trait values with another disease. If you see a full row of green but did not win, you are one step away: think of a close relative with the same profile.
Hints
You get two hints per game. A hint adds an amber hint row that reveals the hidden disease's full value for one trait you have not yet matched exactly. Once all six traits are known, a hint reveals one of the disease's clinical findings instead, such as a symptom, a lab result or an exam sign. Hints never cost a guess.
Winning and losing
Guess the exact disease and you win. If your fifteenth guess is wrong, the answer is revealed at the top of the board. The result screen then shows the diagnosis with a teaching point and its key findings.
Strategy: how to close in fast
Open with a common disease from a big system. Your first guess is about information, not about being right. A well-known disease tells you quickly whether you are in the right system and what kind of process you are looking for.
Pin down System and Type first. Because these two are all or nothing, a grey System tells you to move to a different system entirely, and a green one lets you stay put. Once both are green, you have usually cut the field to a small group.
Use amber carefully. An amber Organs trait means at least one organ is shared, not all of them. Keep the shared organ and ask yourself which diseases in the same system affect it together with something else.
Change one thing at a time. When you are close, choose a guess that differs from your best row in just one or two traits. The result then tells you exactly which trait needs to change.
Think in disease families. Type, Acuity and Treatment split families neatly: an acute structural problem fixed with surgery is a very different group from a chronic metabolic disease managed with meds and lifestyle changes.
Keep a hint for the end. A hint that reveals the exact Organs or Diagnosis value can turn a crowded shortlist into one answer.
Why it works as learning
Traits trains the way clinicians narrow a differential diagnosis: every guess is a hypothesis, and every trait is evidence that rules possibilities in or out. After a few games you start to see diseases as bundles of traits, which makes them far easier to compare and remember.
Stat! and this guide are for education only. They are not medical advice and not a substitute for professional care. If you have a health concern, talk to a qualified clinician.