If you love a fast, funny categories game, the quality of your category list matters more than anything else. The best rounds happen when categories are simple to understand, quick to answer, and still open enough to create surprising answers. That is exactly what makes a best categories game feel addictive instead of frustrating.
Below is our curated list of favorite categories for our categories game app Lexiloot, organized by difficulty so you can plug it into any round immediately.
How to use this list
Take 4 to 10 categories per round (depending on the app version).
Start with Letter Salad as the game mode, and later move on to the slightly more complex Word Bunch and Brain Dilation modes.
The time limit is calculated by the app. You’ll have enough time to enter your answers, so don’t worry about anyone falling behind.
You get 10 points for a valid, unique answer. 20 points if nobody else has that answer.
And watch out: if you give the same answer as someone else, you only get 5 points. Misspelled answers usually also earn 5 points, while missing answers, or completely wrong ones, get 0 points.
Easy categories
These keep the round moving and work great with kids, families, and casual players.
- Animal
- City
- Country
- Colors
- Candy
- Food & snacks
- Fruit & vegetables
- First name
- Boys’ name
- Girls’ name
- Hobbies
- Sports
Medium categories
These are perfect for a competitive categories game because they create variety without being too niche.
- Car Brands
- Clothing brands
- Phone Brands
- Movie titles
- Book titles
- Well-known songs
- Jobs / Professions
- Musical instruments
- Furniture
- Pizza toppings
- Famous landmarks
- Languages
Hard categories
Use these when you want the “wow” answers and a true best categories game vibe.
- Things at the airport
- Things at school / kindergarten
- Things in the House
- Things on vacation
- Things that make noise
- Can fly
- Has wings
- Lives in the sea
- Chemical elements
- Planets
- Paranormal
A quick “perfect round” preset
If you want a balanced set that works with almost any letter, use this 10 pack:
Animal, City, Country, Movie titles, Well-known songs, Car Brands, Food & snacks, Colors, Things in the House, Jobs / Professions.
One rule that instantly improves answers
Ban “catch-all answers”—terms that fit too many categories and keep showing up again and again. That makes every categories game much more creative and ensures the truly great answers win. Lexiloot comes with a sophisticated AI-driven system that checks and validates answers.
If you want to dive a bit deeper later on, we also recommend the game modes “Word Bunch” or “Brain Dilation”, which will really make your brains smoke. In those modes, you have to find multiple categories for one letter, and also multiple words within a single category that all start with the same letter. That’s Categories Game 2.0—and it’s only possible with Lexiloot.
Suggest Your Own Categories
You can also suggest your own categories. Just submit them directly in the app, and our team reviews requests pretty quickly. If everything checks out, the category gets added, and it’s officially yours right away.
