Questions and answers
The things people ask most, answered plainly.
Is Guess the Thing free?
Yes. Every puzzle is free and there is no account to make. The site is paid for by advertising.
When does a new puzzle appear?
Every day at midnight UTC, which is 5:30am in India and 8pm the previous evening on the US east coast. Three of the seven games run each day.
How many guesses do I get?
Six per puzzle. After each wrong guess you get feedback and one more clue, so the sixth guess is played with five clues in hand.
What do the percentages mean?
How close your guess was. For country, city and dog breed it is based on distance. For element, mountain and painting it is based on how far off the number is. For animal it counts matching traits and compares weight.
Why can I only play three games a day?
Seven games sharing three daily slots means no answer repeats for about two years. Running all seven every day would exhaust the smallest pool, elements, in about two months.
Does practice affect my streak?
No. Practice rounds are deliberately excluded from stats and streaks, and they never serve an answer that is coming up as a daily puzzle.
Where do the answers come from?
Open data. Countries from mledoze/countries and Wikidata, cities and mountains and paintings and dog breeds from Wikidata, elements from a public domain periodic table, animals curated by hand.
Do you show maps?
No, deliberately. Countries are shown by a landmark or a landscape photograph, never by a border or an outline, so there is no disputed boundary to get wrong.
Can I play yesterday’s puzzle?
Not yet from the site, though past days are kept and the groundwork is there. Practice rounds draw from the same catalogue in the meantime.
Does it work on a phone?
Yes. It is built for a phone first and works offline once loaded. You can add it to your home screen from your browser menu.
How do I report a mistake or get in touch?
Write to the address on the about page. One independent developer runs the site and reads what arrives, so a wrong answer, a broken puzzle or a photograph credit that needs fixing all reach the same person.