Every Daily Groups puzzle is built so that some words seem to fit two groups. Those are the red herrings, and they're the whole game. Here's how to get past them without burning your four mistakes.
When you spot a category, count how many words could belong to it. If you find five candidates, one of them is a red herring, so don't submit yet. Example: COFFEE, VANILLA, PISTACHIO and STRAWBERRY are ice cream flavors, but COFFEE and VANILLA can also go before BEAN. The flavor group needs all four, so the BEAN group must be made of other words.
Some groups have exactly four candidates and nothing else could join them. Submit that one first. Each solved group removes four words from the board, and the overlaps start to sort themselves out.
"Words before BALL" or "Words after WATER" are easy to miss because the words look unrelated: FOOT, BASKET, SNOW, EYE. If four words seem to have nothing in common, try putting a common word before or after each one.
The trickiest group (purple) is often about the letters, not the meaning: a hidden word (sCATter hides CAT), anagrams (LATE is TEAL rearranged), sounds (WON, ATE, FOR, TOO sound like numbers), or a letter you add or remove. If you're stuck with four leftover words that make no sense, spell them out slowly.
If you hear "One away!", three of your four are right. Swap out the word you were least sure of, and prefer swapping in a word that you already suspected of being a red herring.
The starting layout groups words by accident. Shuffling breaks the false patterns your eyes have locked onto.