About CloseWord
CloseWord is a free daily word game about meaning. Instead of matching letters, you find the secret word by guessing words that are close to it in meaning — and watching how close each guess lands.
How it works
Every guess is compared to the secret word using word embeddings — a technique from natural language processing that maps words into a space where similar meanings sit near each other. CloseWord uses FastText embeddings trained on Wikipedia and news text, covering hundreds of thousands of English words.
Your guess's rank is its position in the similarity list for the secret word: rank 1 is the word itself, rank 2 its nearest neighbour, and so on. That's why "wave" can rank 3 for the word "ocean" while "pencil" ranks in the thousands — the game measures meaning, not spelling.
Three ways to play
- Daily — one puzzle per day, the same for every player worldwide. Compare results with friends without spoiling the answer.
- Practice — unlimited random puzzles drawn from a pool of over 3,000 common English nouns, each with a shareable link.
- Challenge — pick any word you like and send a friend a link to guess it.
New here? Read the full rules on the How to Play page.
Free and privacy-friendly
CloseWord is free to play, with no account, no sign-up, and no paywall. Your game progress and preferences are stored only in your own browser. See the Privacy Policy in the game's settings for details.
Inspiration
CloseWord belongs to the family of semantic guessing games popularized by titles like Semantle and Contexto, which reimagined the daily word puzzle around meaning rather than spelling. We built our own take on the idea with a focus on a clean interface, flexible hints, and the ability to challenge friends with custom words.
Contact
Found a bug, have a feature idea, or just want to say hello? Email us at feedback@closeword.org — we read everything.