Speciedle
Rate itFind the day's mystery animal by how closely related your guesses are.
Every day: One numbered mystery animal species a day, the same for everyone (puzzle #1 was 27 July 2026), plus a separate daily mystery in Hard mode; past puzzles are in an archive. New puzzle: Midnight, your local time.
Speciedle is a free daily guessing game about the animal kingdom. You name animals, and each guess is scored from 0 to 100 by how recently it shared a common ancestor with the hidden species, with its rank in the pool and the deepest clade they share. Guesses are unlimited; the aim is to find it in as few as you can.
About Speciedle
Speciedle hides one animal species a day and asks you to find it by naming others. In place of Wordle's coloured letters, each guess gets a score from 0 to 100 for evolutionary relatedness: how long ago your animal and the mystery species last shared a common ancestor. Guess a lion when the answer is a house cat and you score high; guess a jellyfish and you land on a distant branch.
Every guess also shows its rank out of the whole pool (#3 of 670, say) and the deepest clade it shares with the target, so the hints narrow as you go: Mammalia, then Carnivora, then Felidae. Rows are tinted from Cold through Cool, Warm and Hot to Boiling for the top five, and a tree of your guesses grows on screen as you close in. Guesses are unlimited, and Give up reveals the answer with the closest species you missed.
The maker explains on the about page that an early version scored raw DNA similarity, but most of the animal kingdom bunched at the same score, so the game uses divergence time instead, with taxonomy from NCBI and clade ages from published estimates. Hard mode adds hundreds more animals, mostly mammals and birds, with a separate daily mystery, streak and stats.
There are no accounts: progress, streaks and stats stay in your browser, and the archive holds every puzzle back to #1 on 27 July 2026 for practice. It suits players of Metazooa and other tree-of-life games, and anyone who likes a hot-and-cold search.
How to play Speciedle
- Type an animal into the guess box and pick it from the dropdown of species.
- Read its score from 0 to 100, its rank in the pool and the clade it shares with the mystery species.
- Use the shared clade to choose your next guess from a closer group.
- Keep guessing until you name the exact species, which scores 100.
- Share your result, or try the day's Hard mode for a larger pool.
Tips
- Start broad, with a mammal, a bird and an insect, to find the right branch quickly.
- Rank is often the clearest signal: #3 means only two species in the game are closer.
- Tap a clade name you do not know for its definition before your next guess.
- Once you reach a family, guess its best-known members first.
Questions
When does Speciedle reset?
At midnight in your local time, with a new mystery species each day.
How many guesses do I get?
Unlimited. The aim is to find the species in as few guesses as possible, and Give up reveals it.
Can I play past puzzles?
Yes. The archive goes back to puzzle #1 on 27 July 2026; archive games are practice and do not change your streak.
Ratings and reviews
No ratings yet. Be the first to rate Speciedle.
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