Answers · Puzzle #180 · Saturday 7 November 2026
Cortana and Kes: the pair that sank 251 guesses
Answers for the Saturday puzzle, with the four groups explained and a look at how Artificial Minds drew the most wrong guesses.
Of 421 players who finished Saturday's puzzle, 400 solved the board, a 95% solve rate. Another 21 ran out of guesses. Flawless runs came to 86, or 20% of finishers. The median time was 1:54, and the average player made 3.34 wrong guesses along the way.
The answer board
Each puzzle has one group per colour. Yellow is the most direct connection and purple the most abstract.
The four groups
House Atreides
- Lady Jessica
- Duncan Idaho
- Leto II
- Paul Atreides
The easiest group of the day. All four belong to the ducal family or household of House Atreides in Dune.
Lady Jessica was Duke Leto's Bene Gesserit concubine and Paul's mother. Duncan Idaho is the Swordmaster who mentors Paul. Leto II is Paul's son, and Paul himself rises on Arrakis as Muad'Dib.
Sickbay
- The Doctor
- Kes
- Nurse Chapel
- Bones
Each of these tends the sick aboard a Starfleet ship. Bones is Leonard McCoy, the Enterprise's chief medical officer, and Nurse Chapel works beside him in sickbay.
The other two are from Voyager. The Doctor is its Emergency Medical Hologram, and Kes is the Ocampa who trains as his medical assistant. Kes is the tile that pulled players toward other groups.
Artificial Minds
- The Frenchman
- GLaDOS
- Cortana
- Holly
The hardest group. Every tile is a non-human intelligence living in software or a machine. GLaDOS runs the test chambers of Aperture Science with sarcastic menace, and Cortana lives in Master Chief's armour as a glowing blue figure.
Holly is the computer of the mining ship Red Dwarf, appearing as a face on screens. The Frenchman is the odd one out: Merovingian, an exile program in the Matrix who brokers power and information. His name gives no hint that he is a program.
No Way Out
- The Matrix
- Gilead
- The Upside Down
- The Grid
All four are places that hold people captive with no easy escape. The Matrix traps human minds in a simulation they don't know is a cage. Gilead confines women to enforced roles and watches its borders.
The Upside Down is a hostile mirror of Hawkins, stalked by monsters. The Grid is Kevin Flynn's digital world, where users are forced into deadly games under the MCP.
Wrong guesses per group solved
Each wrong guess counts against the group it came closest to, divided by how many times that group was solved. Higher means harder.
Dashed line: one wrong guess per group solved.
View data as a table
| Group | Wrong guesses nearest | Times solved | Per solve | One tile away |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Artificial Minds | 746 | 400 | 1.9 | 494 |
| Sickbay | 554 | 355 | 1.6 | 307 |
| No Way Out | 213 | 428 | 0.5 | 159 |
| House Atreides | 131 | 444 | 0.3 | 93 |
Cortana and Kes: the cross-group pair
Cortana appeared in 856 of the 1,644 wrong guesses, 52% of them, and GLaDOS was in 847. Both belong to blue, which cost the most misses of any group. The most common mistaken pair across groups was Cortana with Kes, at 251 times. They sit in blue and green. The single most common wrong guess was Cortana, GLaDOS, Holly and Kes together, 94 times: three of the real blue tiles plus Kes, one tile from being right.
That fits the wider figure that 64% of wrong guesses were one tile away. Blue alone had 494 such misses. What we can't tell is why players reached for Kes. The Frenchman was the missing piece in those guesses, and only 2% of players solved blue first.
Which tiles ended up in wrong guesses
How many of the 1644 wrong guesses included each tile.
- House Atreides
- Sickbay
- Artificial Minds
- No Way Out
View data as a table
| Tile | Group | Wrong guesses containing it | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cortana | Artificial Minds | 856 | 52% |
| GLaDOS | Artificial Minds | 847 | 52% |
| Holly | Artificial Minds | 666 | 41% |
| The Doctor | Sickbay | 553 | 34% |
| Nurse Chapel | Sickbay | 497 | 30% |
| Kes | Sickbay | 496 | 30% |
| The Frenchman | Artificial Minds | 469 | 29% |
| Bones | Sickbay | 446 | 27% |
| The Matrix | No Way Out | 415 | 25% |
| The Grid | No Way Out | 368 | 22% |
| Gilead | No Way Out | 256 | 16% |
| The Upside Down | No Way Out | 230 | 14% |
| Leto II | House Atreides | 123 | 7% |
| Paul Atreides | House Atreides | 121 | 7% |
| Lady Jessica | House Atreides | 119 | 7% |
| Duncan Idaho | House Atreides | 114 | 7% |
By the numbers
Play it yourself
Stargrid is a daily sci-fi connections puzzle: sixteen characters, ships and worlds, four hidden groups, ten wrong guesses before it ends. Every puzzle goes into the archive once its day is over, so #180 is still playable there.