Chainle scoring rules: how points are awarded

Chainle scoring rules in one pass

How Chainle scoring rules work on every round: on Chainle the guess is trimmed and lowercased. It must be one token of letters, between 2 and 24 characters. A simple plural is folded back to a base form: a trailing s, es, or ies can still meet a listed singular. The game does not chop off -ing or -ed, because those endings often make a different word. If any form of the guess is one of the clues on the board, the guess is rejected and the round stays open. Copying a clue is not a connection.

If a form matches the strongest listed connection, the score is 1,000. If a form matches an accepted alternative, the score is at least the integer written for that word when the puzzle was checked. Those integers sit between 200 and 980. They are a floor, not a ceiling, when the meaning score is higher. If the guess is in the common-English list and on neither the gold nor the accepted list, the score follows how close it is in meaning to every clue, from 0 to 1,000. That submission spends the round. If the guess is not in the list at all, it is rejected and the round stays open. Typos and private nicknames should not burn the only attempt.

There is no timer and no speed bonus. The Chainle daily board shows the points as a total of five rounds. The share result prints that total and five blocks. A score of 900 or more is a strong block, 600 to 899 is a good block, 300 to 599 is a partial block, and 1 to 299 is an unlisted block. The Chainle scoring bands are not a code for the answer. Play Chainle if you want the live board. The rules do not change on an archive date or on Chainle Unlimited.

A worked example that is not today's puzzle

The classroom clues are piano and keyboard. The strongest listed connection is key, which scores 1,000. A piano sounds when its keys are pressed. A keyboard, on a desk or on an instrument, is a row of keys. Button at 420 and note at 700 are listed beneath key, each with a lower score because the connection is narrower. Walk the other guesses in numbers, because numbers are what the board will show you.

• key scores 1,000. It is the strongest listed connection. A piano key and a keyboard key are both ordinary phrases.
• note scores 700. It is listed. A piano note is solid, and a keyboard note is a thinner idea, so the score stays under the gold.
• button scores 420. It is listed because a desk keyboard has buttons, while a piano does not. The link is real and mostly one-sided.
• pedal scores by meaning. Pedal is a real word in our list, and it fits a piano far better than a computer keyboard. It was not written down as an accepted alternative for this example, so only the semantic score remains. A fair partial can still land well below the listed links.
• piano does not score and does not spend the round. It repeats a clue.
• asdfgg does not score and does not spend the round. It is not in the word list.

If you type "keys", the plural fold matches key and the score is still 1,000. If you type "Key" with a capital, the lowercase fold does the same. If you type two words, the guess is rejected. The board never asks you to confirm a second time. One recognized word is the whole submission.

Why the first version uses a list

Chainle scoring is deterministic. Chainle could score guesses with a big table of word vectors or a hosted embedding model, and instead Chainle uses a list a person checked. The same guess on the same round always returns the same points. It costs nothing at request time. The sentences on each archive page are the reason a score exists, and a reader can disagree in plain language. The Chainle scoring rules on this page are that list, written out.

The costs are real. A joke that depends on a celebrity, a local snack, or a meme can still score low, because closeness in the vector table is not a sense of humor. A British sense and an American sense can diverge. Boot, as a shoe and as a car trunk, is a fair bridge in one dialect and a shrug in another. When a daily puzzle uses that kind of split, the explanation says so, and a one-sided alternative is given a preset floor instead of a perfect score. Homophones are not connections. Rain and reign sound alike and do not score as if they were the same idea. Brand names are not used as clues or as golds. If a common noun is also a company, the puzzle is about the noun.

Meaning scores use a compact vector table on the server. Hand-checked links never score below their listed value. We do not claim the table matches any other game's scorer. 1,000 means "this is the strongest connection we listed," and a lower score means "this is how close the word sat to every clue." Both sentences are narrower than "this is the truth about language."

What the bands are for

The Chainle daily board shows the points and a short label after the server scores the guess. It does not print the answer before you submit. Archive pages print the listed words because those pages are the published record. Chainle Unlimited behaves like the daily board. The share result uses only the band. If you need the worked numbers again, they are the list above, and how to play Chainle tells the same example as a procedure.

Questions the scores raise

Streaks, the UTC reset, and the difference between practice and the daily board are collected on the Chainle FAQ. If a listed score seems indefensible rather than merely strict, write to hello@chainle.me with the date and the word. A correction, if we make one, is a content change to that puzzle, not a quiet rewrite of your local history.