Trios
These brain teasers rely on your ability to recognize groups of common attributes. For each of these puzzles you'll need to figure out why the words or letters are grouped as they are. Sometimes you will be asked to pick the odd-one-out or to place a new word into the correct group.
The following 15 words can be divided into 5 groups of 3 words. The words in each trio will share a similar characteristic. What are the groupings? Why?
astern, bony, con, deal, land, lien, nit, pending, pinion, range, slander, steroid, tile, vary, venue
Answer
Each word can be prefixed with a vowel. Each grouping can be prefixed with the same vowel.
a) lien (alien), steroid (asteroid), venue (avenue)
e) astern (eastern), bony (ebony), land (eland)
i) con (icon), deal (ideal), slander (islander)
o) pinion (opinion), range (orange), vary (ovary)
u) nit (unit), pending (upending), tile (utile)
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Comments
nascarlvr24
Dec 20, 2004
| that was very unique i would have never gotten it. great job.  |
passion  
Dec 21, 2004
| awesome!  i would have never gotten it either!!!  |
Skybet  
Dec 21, 2004
| Fantastic idea, i wish i had gotten it 1st  |
Therulerofthem 
Dec 22, 2004
| very good teaser, keep it up |
litteacher
Dec 23, 2004
| Ditto to all four previous comments! |
sweetpeao4o3
Dec 24, 2004
| cool. yeah i didnt get it.  |
mia02
Dec 28, 2004
| confusing... |
FreakEme09
Jan 05, 2005
| yay my name was in this !! (EBONY)    |
Riki
Jan 22, 2005
| Very intelligent. |
nunya
Jan 22, 2005
| clever,i was trying to group them by definition catagories. |
qtpie9148
Jan 22, 2005
| very good i would have never gotten that so keep em up |
(user deleted)
Jan 22, 2005
| awesome! |
book_worm_77
Jan 22, 2005
| That was cool! I was close, I was trying to group them by letters, but that was very unique and clever! Keep it up! |
filetmerlot
Jan 22, 2005
| I think I got lucky. The first thing I tried was the right answer. First time that ever happened with a teaser rated that tough! |
fuzzie277
Jan 23, 2005
| Very clever. Didn\'t come close to getting it. |
(user deleted)
Jan 23, 2005
| nice 1 |
bongsanvictores
Jan 24, 2005
| Right - that was clever |
saucyangel
Jan 24, 2005
| very clever... i like! |
yellatrek
Mar 28, 2005
| Boy did I take wrong turns! Glad I finally peeked. Clever and great fun. |
smarty_blondy
Aug 28, 2005
| Very clever and a one of a kind group. Congratulations, and i wish you many more to come. |
Sunrose
Sep 22, 2005
| Very clever, and nice ideal. I found it to be fun, a bit hard to do. I enjoyed this one, and I do like the ideal behind the teaser. Good Job, and keep 'em coming |
dalfamnest 
Oct 11, 2009
|  I got cross with this - seemed too random and i didn't persevere. Now I wish I had kept going, as it was a very worthy challenge. I think a hint would have been useful to encourage me to keep at it!
- an exceptional teaser - well done! |
Barticus
Oct 11, 2009
| This is one of the first Braingle puzzles I read about four years ago. It's surprising this excellent teaser didn't make Teaser of the Day before this. |
cribb19
Oct 11, 2009
| i got all except for the u list
i used
snit spending stile
instead of
unit upending utile |
patiencewithaP
Oct 11, 2009
| Yikes! That was too tough too early in the morning! Great teaser! |
mikster678
Oct 11, 2009
| I IMMEDIATELY recognised the connections when I thought 'pinion isn't a word!'(I'm 11, I don't know much) and my only flaw was not knowing which words went where. |
ROCStorm
Oct 11, 2009
| wow...actually got one right...though i got "eland" by process of elimination.....eland? |
ROCStorm
Oct 11, 2009
| oh wait...i got it...island before eland except after sealand |
auntiesis
Oct 11, 2009
| Tough one. I would never have figured this one out. Well done. |
wordmama
Oct 11, 2009
| This teaser was fantastic!!! At first I tried to group meanings but soon saw there was no commonality. Then I noticed the first two words became new words with 'e' in front, then saw a-lien, got the trick, and filled them all in from there; what great fun!!! Thank you sooo much!! |
mepapa
Oct 11, 2009
| I know I sound dumb but what does Utile mean? |
tonjawithaj
Oct 12, 2009
| awesome teaser! I got it right away, but I think I got lucky! |
hubbamutt777 
Oct 12, 2009
| so close!!! i almost got the concept, i thought it was 'put the words together', so i did "astern" mixed with "steriod" to make "asteroid" and "astern" mixed with "lien" to make "alien" (for a space theme)  i didn't know the rest, so i clicked answer, and i got 2/3 on #1, so i got a bad grade great teaser, though!!! |
hubbamutt777
Oct 12, 2009
| mepapa, i don't know what half of those words mean, so u dont sound dumb 2 me! (no, i dont no what utile means, sorry!  ) |
jcann
Oct 12, 2009
| According to the dictionaries I used, untile means useful. |
Babe
Oct 11, 2012
| I had no idea what I was supposed to do. The instructions were very bad. I tried to put three words together that might be alike, but that did not pan out. Judging from the comments I am not alone. No one seemed to know what to do. Sorry! |
spikethru4 
Oct 11, 2012
| Great teaser! But very easy for a Scrabble player to spot those front hooks. (i-slander is one of my favourites) |
gaylewolf
Oct 11, 2012
| Excellent! Clever! Loved it! Thanks for posting! |
cutebug
Oct 11, 2012
| My mind must be playing tricks on me,I was completely lost on this one. |
bestgirl
Oct 11, 2012
| Totally agree with Babe and Cutebug. Had no idea what was wanted. |
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