How scoring works
The score is M.NN
Low score wins. This is golf, not basketball.
M is every word you submitted before the guesser said the target. NN is every letter in those words, as a two-digit decimal. Words always dominate: for OCTOPUS, cephalopod at 1.10 beats big squid at 2.08 — one word of any length outranks every two-word clue. Letters break ties between equal word counts, and solve time breaks letter ties on the board.
Everything you submit counts — missed clues and clues the referee buzzes are charged in full. Spaces are free. Hyphens are banned.
Worked examples
Every example below: the target is OCTOPUS, and the forbidden words are tentacles, eight, arms, ink, sea, suckers.
| Your clues | Score |
|---|---|
| cephalopod → octopus (1 word, 10 letters) | 1.10 |
| boneless reef predator → octopus (3 words, 20 letters — spaces are free) | 3.20 |
| calamari → squid (miss: 1 word, 8 letters, charged) suction cups → octopus (+2 words, 11 letters) |
3.19 |
| inky tentacle monster ✕ buzzed — forbidden words (3 words, 19 letters, still charged) cephalopod → octopus (+1 word, 10 letters) |
4.29 |
So these sort: 1.10 < 2.08 < 3.19 < 3.20 < 4.29 — note the miss-then-save at 3.19 edging the safe phrase at 3.20 on letters alone. (And no, 2.00 can't happen — words contain letters. The floor for two words is 2.02-ish, and a first-try single word can't exceed 1.20.)
What that means for strategy
- The dream is one word that lands cold: cephalopod at 1.10. A six-word essay that works first try is only 6.NN.
- The guesser hears only your latest clue — each attempt starts from nothing, so a failed clue teaches you, not it.
- Gambles have a price: a short clue that misses adds its full cost before your next try. Probe cheap, then commit.
- Getting buzzed is never free. The referee charges the attempt and the guesser never sees it.
- Today's winning clues are sealed — the board shows scores only, so a phenomenal 1.06 taunts you all day. At midnight the day joins the archive and every transcript opens. (Reading a past day's clues before playing it still costs that day's first-try spot.)
- The score itself is the one clue that leaks: that 1.06 announces some six-letter word does the job cold. The rest of the day is a riddle about which one.
Legacy mode scores the same way; there each clue is one word and the guesser remembers the whole conversation.