Odd One Out with a difference (Vocabulary & Speaking activity for all levels)

In the posts, 'Ideas for the First Lesson' and 'Ideas for Practising Dialogues', I covered some activities which can be used to elicit students to speak. Here's another one, suitable for all levels, which is both a speaking and a vocabulary activity.

I'm sure all of you must have heard of the odd one out game. The difference with this one is to have more than one 'odd one out'. It would be even better if all answers are acceptable! It works well with groups or individually.

Write down four or five words on the board, or say them out aloud. The students must choose the one they consider the odd one and give their reason for it. Award points to the student or the group who comes out with the unique reason. To avoid cheating, you can ask them to write their reason down first (this way, they practise writing, too).

Here is an example:

cat, dog, turtle, elephant

Possible answers:

You can't have an elephant as a pet.
Elephants can't jump.
Turtles can't run.
Cats have whiskers.

Here are more words. Choose the odd one and give your reasons and post them as comments below. Also, if you have more interesting groups of words, put them as comments or email them to me.

lion, cat, tiger, bear
cat, dog, dragon, donkey
eagle, owl, bat, penguin
angry, happy, violence, jealous
greed, anger, fear, love
helicopter, aeroplane, bus, bird
Singapore, Tokyo, England, Vietnam
London, Tokyo, Paris, Barcelona
aeroplane, train, lorry, bus
whale, wolf, walrus, orangutan
kitchen, lounge, hall, conservatory, living room
wood, water, paper, brick

The beauty of this game is that you can use all kinds of words and you are likely to find something that is unique about it in relation to the others. You can use words with no significant connection between them, or you can use them to revise a topic, e.g. animals, planets, places in a town, tenses, phrasal verbs, etc.