Last updated on January 30th, 2026 at 09:41 am
Red Herring – Word Game Review
Red Herring is a Word/Puzzle/Education game from Blue Ox Family Games, Inc., first launched in 1st May 2014.
It’s rated 4+ and currently has 46,953+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Red Herring Stand Out
Red Herring is the word connections game.
How to play:
-
Make the connections and group words into categories.
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Look out for the Red Herrings, pesky words whose sole purpose is to
mislead you. -
Have fun making the connections!
Red Herring is a FUN, CHALLENGING, and EASY TO LEARN word connections
puzzle game. Each puzzle has only one correct solution and there's no time
limit. Three difficulty levels make it suitable for the whole family.
Don't say we didn't warn you if you can't stop playing. Give Red Herring a try
today!
From the creators of 7 Little Words and Moxie.
Red Herring contains 25 puzzles and a daily puzzle that you can play for free.
Additional puzzles are available for purchase inside the app.
This Word game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Red Herring is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 6th October 2025
Recent improvements include:
Bug fixes.
Download & Availability
Red Herring is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
Although we only do easy, we find the game challenging and interesting.
This game is fun because it makes you look at things from different perspectives. The subjects are never boring and dont repeat.
Play this and have a wonderful time. Play at your pace, with three levels and no timer. We dont fish, we dont eat fish, often, dont even own a boat, but this design is nice. Truly, its such a pleasure to play. And, you can play, for free, everyday.
Ive played this game repeatedly since long before the pandemic. But occasionally, Im truly unimpressed with some of groupings. For example, we see maroon as a shade of red. But in one Red Herring group, maroon was included with russet bronze and sepia as a shade of brown. Its not common for us to encounter these kind of problems. But it happens enough that Ive taken a break several times over the years because of our frustration with solutions that dont make sense to us. Obviously we enjoy the game on the whole because we keep coming back. If these glitches didnt repeatedly occur, it would be one of our all-time favorite phone games.
This game is a fun way to pass the time, but hints are needed which are 3$.
This is a wonderfully simple and unique game that we've been playing off and on for years. We don't mind the structure of having to purchase puzzle packs beyond the daily free ones, as they're reasonably priced and we've always felt the developers and puzzle creators deserve it. What we DO mind, however, is that this once ad-free game is now full of ads between puzzles, and there doesn't seem to be a way to remove them. Developers, please add a one-time ad-free purchase option or remove ads for paying users automatically. Ads make for an especially poor user experience in the flow of more cerebral games like this one.
We learned how to play from You Tube.
We completely agree with Whoever59! For a long time, Red Herring was among our favorite games. Visually appealing and straightforward, the brilliant simplicity and overall concept behind this unique word sorting puzzle challenged our inner wordsmith and encouraged left-brain thinking and creativity. Having completed its generous offering of free (and ad-less) puzzle packs, we continue to play the (also free) Red Herring "Daily Challenge". In recent months, however, we are finding this game to be increasingly frustrating as more and more puzzles involve absurdly esoteric categories and far-fetched and forced connections between words. (As a side note… Due to the nature and structure of this game, we assume it cannot be computer generated; so we wonder if its creators have simply run out of ideas for categories, which would explain the decline in quality. Just a thought…).
We love this game and we play it daily, but its been crashing lately.
Crashes after every few puzzles.
Its a great challenge like playing this game.
UPDATE: The developer has clarified the categories here, and has renewed our trust that these items are properly labeled. The core mechanic is well-designed, so Ill keep playing. PREVIOUS (3 stars, Neat concept, flawed execution): Orange and Grape are both Spheres and Fruits. Im aware that some items can belong to more than one category, but they should never belong to the same exact ones as other items if they do. This is a deal-breaker. Also, the UI is weird. Did you complete a puzzle? Sometimes you can tell, other times not.
We have enjoyed playing this app for quite a while. Once we started using a VPN, however, it wont work. Ill have to find another game; our online privacy is more important.
If Im not mistaken, Ive been playing this since around 2012. Good game. We try to make purchases now & then to ensure that it sticks around.
Fun puzzle that keeps the mind sharp.
Really enjoy this game but since we bought a new phone has messed with the optics – too big for the screen and no amount of messing with settings has helped things.
Love this game! Play it every day, just a simple challenge, and not too involved.
Well thought out, clever, and fun.
This app is a true trivia. We hope you enjoy the experience.
Play on Hard . Its the only way.
We like games that force us to use our brain, test our memory, and often teach us new things. This one does. Thank you.
This is one of the only games we can say Ive played consistently for several years now. We always loved Mailboxes in the Penny Press magazines and this is the closest Ive found. Sure theres scattergories but its timed and you have to compete with other people. Ugh. Give us one player games thanks. Nobody we know likes the same stuff as we do and we hate playing against strangers. Wont open todays game for some reason but Ill try again tomorrow.
Ive played this game for a couple of years now. We like that its quick, but it also gets your brain working. Its like a mental caffeine shot to get you thinking.
Ive been playing Red Herring for years and love it.
Its a fun game but sometimes the references are obscure.
Great game, but it freezes up frequently. Three times in the past two weeks. When you uninstall then reinstall, you have to go through that bothersome orientation each time! It used to be trouble free, but lately its been pretty disappointing.
Great game but having to pay for almost everything and the constant adds were such a turn off.
Love the game!!! Hate the ads.
This is a fun game, and it runs smoothly. But too many categories are obscure. For example, one category was Mountains in Colorado. Who outside Colorado would know anything about that? Such categories only lead to frustration. So this game was a reluctant delete for us.
We haven't been able to open the game for several days now. Went back to the app store to try and open it. Guess we wont be playing anymore. Really like the game.
Love the content and always annoyed and delighted by the solutions.
Spend more time waiting and closing ads than we do actually playing. After years of enjoying but still no pay-no-ads option, have been playing less and less.
Awesome family friendly games! We love all the games we have played that have been created by this company. They all help stimulate your mind.
Not a bad game. It was fun while we could play it. Its only free for the first game and the daily game. Other than that you have to pay to play. No thanks. You even have to pay for the previous free daily games. With all the other totally free ones out there we just went ahead and deleted it. If youre made of money and dont mind paying to play a game, it was fun.
If there werent ads after EVERY GAME. Whats the point of paying for more levels when we still have to watch ads to play? Why isnt there a no ads option? Ridiculous greed ruins an otherwise enjoyable game.
So much fun! Makes you think! Excellent value!lots of fun.
The great word gave. We do it daily to keep our brain active. Im 87.
Ive been playing red herring for several years. A wonderful word game to play during a meal, sitting on a train, plane, waiting room. Each day has a free game, and each game has three difficulty levels you can play to challenge yourself. No gimmicks. No ads. Oh thank the lord none of those ads. Five stars for that alone.
This game is very cool and interesting to play. We love how they put explanations on some of the answers because we always like to learn new things.
We are 69 years old and this game helps us to keep our mind sharp. We cant wait for the next one each day.
Ive been playing this for years and its always interesting! GREAT GAME.
It is a great game to play but only one free game a day is a bummer.
We downloaded this today and played some easy puzzles. When we got to number five in the imagination hard level, we succeeded at plants and people in charge slots but not the others. The other words were ; Clooney, Foreman, California,Oregon, Washington, Hoover, Harrison, and Roosevelt. We expected the mystery slot to be presidents, so we slid Washington, Harrison, Hoover, and Roosevelt but it was still grey. The leftover words ; Clooney, Foreman, California, and Oregon were in the red herring slot but it was also still grey. Ive spent several minutes trying to get this right and figured it was a bug. Please correct us if Im wrong or help us if it is a bug. Thank you very much.
This game could be more fun if the answers were known entities. It seems they are written by non-English speakers who just pick answers at random from the dictionary or Google.
The Red Herring app will not open in our new iPad. Black screen, small x in very upper right hand corner. Works on our phone-.
We love the game. It really keeps us thinking! We would like to keep playing- we buy the puzzle packs, and am willing to pay more to go ad free. How can we do that? The ads can be impossible to get out of- with lots of clicking before actually getting to any kind of countdown ad timer. Help.
The packs are advertised as 1.99 but a 7.95 charge shows up on your credit card.
First game we play each morning. Nice warm up.
Katheryn Hepburn was NOT in Morning Glory!! That was Diane Keaton.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 2.5.10
- Size: 59.56 MB
- iOS: 16.6 or later
- Languages: EN
- Content Advisory:
- Developer: Blue Ox Family Games, Inc.
Last updated: 6th October 2025 | Genre: Word, Puzzle | Developer: Blue Ox Family Games, Inc.