A meaning game. Rank 1 is the word. · September 17, 2026
How to Play Contexto
Type a whole word. The game answers with a rank. Lower is closer. Rank 1 is the secret word. You can keep guessing; there is no guess limit.
Contexto is a meaning game. It does not fill letter boxes. If two words show up in similar situations in real language, they sit near each other. If they do not, the rank stays high.
GuessWord is independent and not affiliated with Contexto. Both are semantic word-guessing games; they are made by different companies.
Same kind of closeness. A 0–100 score, and two lists so a batch of guesses stays easy to compare.
What you do
Open the board, type any English word, press Enter. The guess comes back with a number. That number is a rank: where this word sits by meaning, not by spelling.
Compare this rank with your last one. If the number dropped, you moved toward the right neighborhood. If it jumped up, you left it. Rank 1 is the word itself.
A new secret word arrives each day on the main site. Some boards keep older puzzles. Hints, if a board has them, are extra. The loop is still: type, read rank, type again.
What “closer” means — suppose the word is banana
The number is not a grade. It is how near your guess sits in meaning. A made-up round makes that easier to see. Suppose the secret word is banana. None of this is a real daily puzzle.
First ask whether it is something you eat. food will sit closer than solid or liquid. You have not found banana. You have found the right large pile.
Inside food there is still meat, vegetables, fruit. fruit will sit closer than meat or vegetable. The pile is smaller.
Then try a color. yellow will sit closer than red. You are in the fruit that is yellow, still without naming banana.
Each guess is a cut: eatable or not, which kind of food, which color. The rank tells you which cut was nearer. Related words can move you as much as dictionary synonyms. school can sit near teacher even though the letters barely overlap.
Some boards color the rank. A common unofficial banding is green about 1–300, orange about 301–1500, and red 1501 and above. Color is a shortcut around the same ranking. The number is still a rank, not a temperature and not a 0–100 score.
First guesses
Early guesses work better when they test a large pile, the way food did in the banana round. A first guess that is already tiny — one fruit, one object — only tests a corner.
Best starting words for Contexto
Which wide words to try first, and how to stay in the winning bundle.
Read the opening-word guide →What usually goes wrong
Treating it like a letter game. Shared letters are not a clue.
Starting too specific. You learn less from one banana-like word than from food.
Leaving a closer pile after one bad follow-up. If fruit dropped the rank, try a few more fruit words before you jump.
Reading the number as a score instead of comparing it with the last guess.
By the way
How to play Contexto is the loop above. Following banana all the way to rank 1 is just more of the same cuts.
Look at a batch like food, fruit, and yellow. Contexto only lines every guess up by how close it is to the secret word. In that moment you often need which of those cuts is ahead of the others, not which number is smallest against the whole dictionary.
GuessWord is the same kind of meaning game, made by a different company. It reports closeness as a 0–100 similarity score (higher is closer; only the exact word wins). It also keeps two lists of the same guesses: one by closeness, one in the order you just typed, so a batch like food / fruit / yellow stays comparable. Come try a board there.
Same kind of closeness. A 0–100 score, and two lists so a batch of guesses stays easy to compare.