Connections

 I've playing the connections game from NYT.  There are 16 words, in four categories (four words per category. You guess them one by one, and the game updates if you guess them correctly.  

The first step would be to identify at least 2 categories.  

The words were Marley, Hope, Glen, Hue, Color, Dre, Genre.... etc... 

I saw one category soon:  glen, hollow, dell, dale. 

Then I saw one related to color: shade, hue, color, tone, 

Then, it was obvious that the only Marley I knew was Bob. I remembered Bob Ross was a guy with a PBS painting show. The other two were Bob Dole, the politician, and Bob Hope, the comedian.  

The last category was anagrams of colors: Dre, genre, Gary, lube, for red, green, gray, and blue.  

The secret is not putting in any answers until you have mostly solved in your head. Gary, Glen, Hope, and Dale are first names, for example. Dre and Marley could be part of musician category.  Shade might go with glen or hollow.  Some people try to guess the hardest category first, which involves figuring out all of them and then guessing at what the hardest might be.