4Stack #32 — answers & breakdown
Friday, August 14, 2026
Commercial history rather than critical history. The purple group contains a card that fits the blue group so exactly that it is the reason this puzzle works.
The sixteen cards in this puzzle were: Super Mario 64, Halo: Combat Evolved, Astro's Playroom, Ridge Racer, Tetris, Minecraft, Wii Sports, GTA V, Angry Birds, Candy Crush, Clash of Clans, Subway Surfers, Solitaire, Minesweeper, 3D Pinball, Snake.
The four stacks
Best-sellers of all time
Tetris, Minecraft, Wii Sports, GTA V
The best-selling games ever made. Tetris and Minecraft swap places at the top depending on which sales figures you accept and how you count decades of Tetris ports.
Mobile blockbusters
Angry Birds, Candy Crush, Clash of Clans, Subway Surfers
Mobile blockbusters, all free to download and none of them free to finish quickly.
Came preinstalled
Solitaire, Minesweeper, 3D Pinball, Snake
Games that arrived bundled with an operating system or a phone rather than bought. Snake shipped on Nokia handsets from 1997 and is probably the most widely distributed game on this board.
Console launch titles
Super Mario 64, Halo: Combat Evolved, Astro's Playroom, Ridge Racer
Console launch titles. Astro's Playroom is the trap — it comes preinstalled on every PS5, so it belongs in the blue group on a plain reading. It sits here because the blue group already has four Microsoft and Nokia entries with no other home, which is what settles it.
Want to try it yourself? Play puzzle #32 — archive plays don't affect your streak. Or jump into today's puzzle.