Question 1

How do you play CloseWord?

Accepted Answer

Guess any word. The game tells you how close it is in meaning to the hidden word — as a rank out of the whole vocabulary. Rank 1 is the answer. Rank 4 means you are almost there. Rank 1,900 means you are nowhere.

Question 2

Is this free? Do I need an account?

Accepted Answer

Free, no account, no download, and unlimited — there is no one-a-day wait here.

Question 3

What does the rank actually mean?

Accepted Answer

Your guess’s position when every word in the 2125-word vocabulary is sorted by closeness to the answer. Rank 12 means only eleven words in the entire list are closer than yours.

Question 4

Closeness in what sense?

Accepted Answer

Meaning, not spelling. KING is close to QUEEN and nowhere near KIND. The letters are irrelevant — a word that looks nothing like the answer can be rank 2.

Question 5

How does the game know what words mean?

Accepted Answer

Every word in the vocabulary is converted to a vector by a language model, once, before the game ships. Two words are close when their vectors point in similar directions. The game itself carries the vectors, not the model — so it works offline and there is nothing to wait for.

Question 6

Is the ranking the same for everybody?

Accepted Answer

Yes. It is fixed data, computed once. Two players guessing the same word on the same puzzle get the same rank.

Question 7

Why show a rank rather than a percentage?

Accepted Answer

Because the raw similarity numbers are useless to look at — the interesting range is squeezed into a narrow band and the values mean nothing on their own. A rank is immediately legible, and the last few hundred ranks are where all the difficulty lives.

Question 8

Why is the bar not proportional to the rank?

Accepted Answer

Because a proportional bar would make rank 1 and rank 60 look identical — both a sliver — when they are the difference between winning and not. The bar is warped so the closest hundred ranks occupy most of its width.

Question 9

What do the colours mean?

Accepted Answer

Warmth bands: burning is the top ten, hot the top fifty, warm the top two hundred, then cool and cold. Every band is also labelled in words, because a game made entirely of one signal must not depend on telling red from green.

Question 10

How many guesses do I get?

Accepted Answer

As many as you like. There is no losing here, only a longer list — the game is a search, and cutting it short would just be frustrating.

Question 11

What does the hint do?

Accepted Answer

Gives you the closest word you have not already guessed. It is deliberately another word rather than a letter or a category, because the game is about triangulating a meaning and the useful help is one more point to triangulate from.

Question 12

Why was my word rejected?

Accepted Answer

It is not in the vocabulary. Only words on the list can be ranked, because a word with no vector has no position to measure — the message says so rather than pretending it was a bad guess.

Question 13

Why is the vocabulary limited?

Accepted Answer

It is built from a curated list of words people know. A full dictionary would mean the answer could be a word nobody has met, which turns a deduction game into a trivia question.

Question 14

What is a good strategy?

Accepted Answer

Start wide and far apart — a few unrelated words like MUSIC, RIVER, MONEY — and see which direction is warmest. Then close in: guess words near your best one, and use the ones that get colder to work out which way is wrong. It is a search, and the cold guesses carry as much information as the warm ones.

Question 15

My best guess is rank 3 and I am stuck. What now?

Accepted Answer

Guess its synonyms, its opposite, and the category above it. Rank 3 means the answer is in that neighbourhood, and the neighbourhood is usually smaller than it feels — the word is often a plainer version of what you already have.

Question 16

Does word length or first letter help?

Accepted Answer

Not at all — nothing about the spelling is used. Two words with no letters in common can be ranks 1 and 2.

Question 17

Why does the newest guess stay at the top?

Accepted Answer

Because you reason from your last guess and from your closest one, and both need to be one glance away. The newest is pinned; everything else is sorted by rank underneath it.

Question 18

Can I replay the same puzzle?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Every puzzle has a number and the same number always produces the same puzzle, so you can hand somebody the link and compare.

Question 19

Is there a daily word?

Accepted Answer

No. Play as many as you like — every game number is a different answer.

Question 20

How is this different from Wordle?

Accepted Answer

Completely. Wordle is about letters in positions and gives you six tries. This is about meaning, gives you unlimited tries, and the answer can be a word that shares no letters with anything you have guessed.

Question 21

What if I give up?

Accepted Answer

The answer is revealed and you can start another. Nothing is lost — there is no streak and no score to protect.