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The 16 words below may be separated into 4 groups.
Additionally, there is a word absent from the wall which can be placed in all four of those groups.
ANON BOARD CANDY CLOCK
CRAZY DRUG DRUNK MARCH
OAKEN RAVEN ROCK SIZE
TAKE TIME TOUCH VAT

Can you identify the four groups?
What new word can be placed in all four of those groups?

Hint:

One of the categories is stuck in 2011, with an actor who would peak in a later year by singing with a Stone

Hint 2:

One of the categories can be of noble descent, the head of its members can be replaced with more noble ones

Hint 3:

One of the categories doesn't start soft, the members would love some extra strength to help them

Hint 4:

One of the categories goes further than needed, but maybe too much

Hint 5:
All previous hints now have additional bold text

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2 Answers 2

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With a hat-tip to Rand al'Thor for identifying two of the connecting categories, I believe the connecting wall can be resolved as follows:

Group 1: Words that can be preceded by 'OVER'
(thanks @Rand)

OverTAKE
OverBOARD
OverSIZE
OverCLOCK

Group 2: Words that can be preceded by 'HARD'
(thanks @Rand)

Hard ROCK
Hard TIME
Hard CANDY
Hard DRUG

Group 3: Replace initial letter with Periodic Table symbol for a noble gas

ANON → XeNON
RAVEN → HeAVEN
OAKEN → KrAKEN
VAT → NeAT

Group 4: Words in the titles of 2011 Ryan Gosling movies/TV shows

CRAZY, Stupid, Love
DRUNK History
The Ides of MARCH
TOUCH of Evil

This means that the overall connection for the wall is:

DRIVE - a word with relevance to the title (think 'get up and go') and which satisfies all four group connections:

OverDRIVE
Hard DRIVE
DRIVE → Arrive
The 2011 Ryan Gosling movie, DRIVE

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  • $\begingroup$ That is correct! I wish I could separate that checkmark in two to give Rand al'Thor more credit, his work did help a lot. $\endgroup$
    – Auribouros
    Commented Mar 25, 2022 at 11:49
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I'd written up a partial answer to this last week, and then decided it wasn't enough to bother posting. As it's still unanswered several days later, let's give it a shot.

Hint 4 makes me more sure that I'm correct about the one category I found:

words that can have OVER in front of them to form new words.

The words in this category are

BOARD, CLOCK, SIZE, TAKE, TIME.

Hint 3 could be

words that can have HARD in front of them to form new words or phrases,

with the words being

CANDY, DRUG, ROCK, TIME.

The remaining words, if I'm right about the two groups so far, are:

ANON, CRAZY, DRUNK, MARCH, OAKEN, RAVEN, TOUCH, VAT.

Another category could be

words that can have WOOD behind them,

because we have

Ravenwood, Oakenwood, Marchwood, and the phrase "touch wood",

but I'm not sure which of the hints might be cluing that. If I'm right about this, it would leave

ANON, CRAZY, DRUNK, VAT

as the last four words to be grouped somehow.

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  • $\begingroup$ You're on the right way! Ubjrire GVZR vfa'g va gur "Bire" pngrtbel, rira gubhtu vg svgf. $\endgroup$
    – Auribouros
    Commented Mar 24, 2022 at 15:27
  • $\begingroup$ I also suspected rot13(bire nf n pngrtbel), definitely seems most likely after hint 4. rot13("Bnxra") seems like it would be pretty easy to suss out but it has me stumped. I was thinking rot13("Bnxrafuvryq"), which is sort of validated by hint 2 but rot13("fuvryq") doesn't work on any other word. Maybe it's less straightforward? $\endgroup$
    – coffin_queen
    Commented Mar 24, 2022 at 15:39
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    $\begingroup$ @Auribouros Hmm, I can't figure out which of the others could fit in that category - this is "rare". For Hint 3, I was thinking about rot13(jbeqf gung pna or cerprqrq ol UNEQ) - TAKE, TIME, ROCK, CANDY perhaps - but it feels a bit tenuous. $\endgroup$
    – Rand al'Thor
    Commented Mar 24, 2022 at 15:39
  • $\begingroup$ @Randal'Thor could be rot13('birepybpx')? $\endgroup$
    – coffin_queen
    Commented Mar 24, 2022 at 15:41
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    $\begingroup$ @Auribouros Ahh, that makes a big difference! I was restricting my search for categories to something that would also fit one of the four words in the first category I found. $\endgroup$
    – Rand al'Thor
    Commented Mar 24, 2022 at 16:09

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