Guess the Font

About Guess the Font

Guess the Font is a small daily quiz on The Stupid Web, a site of one-idea pages. Every day it picks one typeface from a deck of 180 open-licensed fonts, with their names and designers taken from Google Fonts, and sets a single word in it on a numbered specimen sheet.

You type the name of a font from the deck as your guess. The game sets the day's word in the face you guessed under your row, so you can compare the two, and tells you how close you are: the same class or not, too narrow or too wide, x-height too small or too big. If you pick the wrong face by the right designer it says you are getting warmer. A button shows you the lowercase g of the mystery font, at the cost of one guess.

The day's font changes at midnight UTC, so everyone gets the same one, and only that round counts toward your streak and your shareable grid. After it you can play extra rounds picked at random from the deck; these are not saved or counted. Under the game the page has a short guide to telling faces apart: the g and the a, Helvetica against Arial, terminals and apertures.

It suits designers, typography fans and anyone who has wondered what font a sign is set in. The interface can be switched to a dozen languages, including Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, French and German.

How to play Guess the Font

1. Look at the day's word, set in the mystery typeface.
2. Type the name of a font from the deck and submit it as your guess.
3. Read the row that comes back: class, width and x-height, each marked as a match or too small or too big.
4. Compare the day's word set in your guessed face with the mystery one, and use the hints to narrow it down.
5. If you are stuck, reveal the lowercase g, which costs one guess.
6. Name the font within six guesses, then copy your result to share it.

Tips

• Check the lowercase g first: a double-storey g points to most serifs and the humanist sans, a single-storey g to the geometric faces.
• Use the class hint before anything else, then width and x-height to choose between faces in that class.
• A 'right designer' message means another face by the same designer is a good next guess.
• The g reveal costs a guess, so take it early if you have no idea of the class.

Questions