CloseWord

About CloseWord

CloseWord hides one English word each day and lets you guess as often as you like. Each guess gets a rank by meaning: a word ranked 3 is one of the closest there is, one ranked 380 is in the right neighbourhood, and anything above 1,000 is far off. The game's own share card shows how a run goes: three, room, door and brick are distant, roof and house get warmer, wall is ranked 8, and fence is the answer.

Guesses are listed with a coloured bar, green and blue when very close, yellow and orange when warm and grey when far, and you can sort them by closeness or by the order you tried them. Three hints per game each reveal a word and its rank, and you can give up to see the answer. Plurals and verb forms rank almost the same as the base word, so there is no need to try both.

The daily word is the same for everyone in the world and changes at midnight UTC, with a countdown on the victory screen. Besides the daily there is a practice mode and a multiplayer mode where you challenge a friend. It is free in the browser, with ads.

It suits players of Contexto and Semantle who like the hunt through related ideas more than spelling.

How to play CloseWord

1. Type any English word and submit it.
2. Read its rank: the lower the number, the closer it is in meaning to the secret word.
3. Follow your warmest guesses into related words and synonyms.
4. Use up to three hints if you get stuck; each shows a word and its rank.
5. Reach rank 1 to find the word, then share your result.

Tips

• Start broad with words from different areas: an animal, a place, a feeling, an object.
• Once you have a warm word, try its synonyms and things it is used with.
• If everything is above 1,000, abandon that topic and try something completely different.
• Do not spend guesses on plurals or tenses of a word you have already tried.

Questions