How to Play Contexto
One hidden word. Every guess comes back with a number telling you how close it is in meaning. Get to #1.
The objective
There is a single secret word. You find it by typing words and reading the rank each one earns. The rank is its position in a list of every word in the vocabulary, sorted by closeness of meaning to the answer. Rank #1 is the word itself.
Nothing is eliminated and nothing is timed. A round ends when you reach #1 or choose to see the answer.
How a guess works
Type a word, press Enter, and it joins your list with its rank. Here is what a real opening looks like:
- musicopening guess8,342
- waterbetter direction2,201
- rivernarrowing412
- harbourright neighbourhood47
- portalmost there3
Notice what happened between water and river: the number dropped by a factor of five, which is the real signal. The absolute size of a rank matters much less than the direction it moves.
What each rank means
- #1Solved
- #2–10Extremely close
- #11–100Very close
- #101–500Close
- #501–1,500Getting warmer
- #1,501 and aboveFar away
Under #100 you are inside the right idea and should stop exploring. Between #100 and #1,500 you are near the right region but not the right sense of it. Above that, treat the guess as information about where the answer is not.
Why meaning, not spelling
Every word in the vocabulary carries a numeric fingerprint derived from the company it keeps in ordinary English. Words used in the same situations end up with similar fingerprints, which is why doctor and hospital sit close together despite sharing no letters.
- hospitalused in the same contexts6
- nursesame world12
- doctrineshares six letters19,204
This is also why spelling accuracy still matters even though spelling similarity does not — a typo is simply a different word, or no word at all.
Hints, in order
- Broad category. The part of speech and the family the word belongs to.
- Conceptual clue. A dictionary-style description with the answer masked out.
- Shape. First letter and length.
- Closer word. A word that ranks better than anything you have tried.
Hints never show the answer. Taking one is recorded in your result so a shared score stays honest. If you want the clues without playing, the today page lists them for the current puzzle.
Daily, unlimited and archive
The daily puzzle is shared by everyone and resets at midnight UTC. Unlimited mode uses a separate word pool with easy, normal and hard settings. The archive keeps every past daily puzzle playable, so a missed day is never lost.
Common beginner mistakes
- Chasing letters. Trying cart, card, cars after cat wastes guesses; none of them are semantically related.
- Opening with rare words. Unusual vocabulary tends to return uninformative numbers in the tens of thousands. Start common.
- Staying in one category too long. If ten animal words all sit above #3,000, the answer is not an animal. Leave.
- Ignoring word forms. Verbs, plurals and adjectives of the same idea can rank hundreds of places apart.
- Taking hint 4 immediately. It hands you a top-ranked word, which shortens the round but removes most of the puzzle.
Rules questions
Is there a limit on guesses?
No. Guess as often as you like; the number of guesses is a score, not a budget.
Why did my word get rejected?
Only single English words that exist in the game’s 38,437-word vocabulary can be ranked. Proper nouns, very rare words, hyphenated compounds and typos fall outside it and come back as unrecognised — they do not count as a guess.
Does the game care about plurals or tenses?
They are treated as separate words and can rank differently. If run stalls, running and ran are worth trying — the difference is often larger than people expect.
What happens when I press Give up?
You confirm once, then the secret word appears along with its meaning and the words that ranked near the top. The round ends and your guesses stay visible.