Games like Contexto: daily word games guessed by meaning

The closest games are the other hot-and-cold meaning games, and the daily semantic word games page (/daily-semantic-games) lists every one we know. CloseWord, Heatword from Zalize and Galexical rank every guess the way Contexto does, with the answer at number 1; Heatword turns into a country hunt by distance on Sundays, and Galexical draws your guesses as planets orbiting the secret word. Proximity from CleverGoat stacks your guesses in order of closeness with no limit on tries. Hot & Cold at hotandcold.app ranks every noun you guess among about 15,000 and adds a heat band from freezing to blazing, with a score out of 1,000 that drops after your first four guesses. Clueless from Lessgames ranks guesses by similarity and lets you compare your count with the day's other players, and Warmer from Mind Loft gives a cold-to-hot colour with an exact rank.

Semantle, from the same family, gives each guess a similarity score instead of a rank, so you learn to read numbers rather than positions, and only shows a rank once you are among the thousand closest words. Cemantle shows a temperature in degrees for every guess, and Pimantle plots your guesses around the answer on a radial chart, which makes it easier to see which direction you are heading.

Some add a second clue. Concepto gives a bridge word with each guess that hints at the link to the answer, and Dowsle shows how close each guess is in spelling as well as in meaning. Nounable plays the same game with proper nouns: the answer might be a person, a city, a film or a brand. Anoun is about nouns only: each wrong guess tells you a trait it shares with the answer, so it plays more like twenty questions.

If an unlimited hunt is too long for you, Lexicle limits you to eleven guesses at a five-letter word and adds a hint with each one, so a round ends sooner. Dartwords from The Game Band gives you ten guesses, with a dart that lands nearer the bullseye the closer you are and a chatty hint from its mascot Darty. Word Sprint is shorter still: five hint words related to the answer, five guesses, and a closeness percentage for each. Wick scores each guess from icy blue to red-hot and lets you ask the keeper of the word yes-or-no questions; it plays at guesswick.com and as an iPhone app.

Contexto itself has Portuguese and Spanish versions, and Wick plays in English, Spanish, French, Italian and German. For a French hunt there is Cémantix, the original of Cemantle, and Korean players have 꼬맨틀 (Kkomantle), a Korean Semantle.

Linxicon turns the idea around: instead of one secret word you get two unrelated words a day and link them with a chain of words close in meaning, using as few as you can. Lexrific, an iPhone app, and Word Chain from Word Nerd work the same way and show how close your chain is to the goal word as a percentage. For a longer puzzle built on the same instinct, Redactle and Pedantle black out a whole Wikipedia article and you guess words to reveal it until you can name the title; more of these are on the daily Wikipedia games page (/daily-wikipedia-games).

Start with CloseWord or Heatword if you want the same ranked list as Contexto, Semantle or Pimantle if you want scores instead, add Concepto if you want more help, and try Lexicle or Word Sprint on days when you want a short one.