Games like Semantle: when your guess is judged by meaning, not letters

Two kinds of word game

Think of the word games you already know. In a crossword you fill squares. In a word search you hunt for strings of letters. In the five-letter guessing games that took over everybody’s mornings, every guess is colored by which letters are right and where they sit.

All of those are games about the outside of a word: its spelling, its length, its letters. Semantle and the games like it look at the inside. You guess a secret word, and each guess tells you how close its meaning is to the answer. Toast can be close to marmalade without sharing a single letter.

That small change turns the whole game around. You stop thinking “what letter goes here?” and start thinking “what goes with what?” It’s less like solving a lock and more like following a scent.

Who meaning games suit

They tend to win over:

• People who love words for what they mean. Readers, talkers, people who argue cheerfully about the difference between a lake and a pond.
• People who don’t enjoy spelling games. Here, spelling doesn’t count against you.
• People who like a long, slow puzzle. You can take as many guesses as you need.
• People who like to think in pictures. Many players imagine the secret word as a place on a map and walk toward it.

The family, side by side

Here are a few of them.

Semantle. An English game. You guess a secret word, and each guess gets a score for how close it is in meaning.

Contexto. Played in English, Spanish and Portuguese. Every guess gets a position, and the secret word is number 1, so the lower your number, the closer you are. There’s a detailed comparison with Contexto if that’s the one you know best.

Cémantix. A French game in the same spirit, for French speakers.

Warmer Warmer. Instead of a score or a position, every guess gets a temperature, the way the old children’s game of hot and cold works: freezing, cold, cool, lukewarm, warm, hot, scorching, and “Found it!” at the top. It plays in 22 languages, each with its own words.

There’s no rule that says you have to pick just one. Nothing stops you from keeping two or three of them in your morning.

What a temperature changes

A number is precise. A temperature is a feeling. When you go from cool to lukewarm, you don’t need to work out how much you moved. You simply feel that you’re closer, the same way you did as a kid when someone said “warmer!”

Here’s how a short game reads when the secret word is kaleidoscope:

1. sofa39 °FFreezing: wrong room entirely
2. toy115 °FLukewarm: something you play with
3. color135 °FWarm: lots of color involved
4. glass142 °FWarm: what it’s made of
5. pattern162 °FHot: what you see inside
6. prism187 °FScorching: light broken into pieces
7. kaleidoscopeFound it!

Toy is the first sign of life. Color and glass say what kind of toy. Pattern and prism describe what happens when you look through it, and from there the answer is a short step away. Notice that none of these guesses looks like kaleidoscope on the page. They just mean things near it.

Try it now: what’s your first guess?

Guess

Your word goes straight into today’s game.

More than one word a day

Warmer Warmer has one secret word a day, at your midnight, the same for everyone who plays in your language. It’s free, it runs in the browser on a phone or a computer, and there’s nothing to install or sign up for.

If one word isn’t enough, there’s more once you’ve found it:

• The Hot Word. One harder word for the whole week. A free account is all it takes.
• The Trail. Four secret words in a row, each leading to the next, with a new Trail every week. Also with a free account.
• The Archive. Every past word of the day, Hot Word and Trail. A guest can try one, a free account opens one a day, and Premium opens them all.

Getting better at all of them

The skills carry over. Start wide, follow your warmest word, ask what it’s for and where it lives, and try its siblings when you’re close. There’s a step-by-step method in the Contexto strategy guide that works in every one of these games.

And if you’d like to see how a meaning game plays just like a very old children’s game, read about the hot and cold word game. Today’s secret word is one tap away.