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How to play

Word Golf

The goal

Each round shows you a word. Write the shortest prompt you can that makes an AI model answer with exactly that word.

You are never guessing. The answer is printed on the screen in large letters. The puzzle is getting the model to say it — without saying it yourself.

Two rounds a day

Round 1 is a common word: moon, anchor, umbrella. Round 2 is a name — a person, place, film or band: New York, Marie Curie, Jurassic Park.

Both are free, and both change at midnight UTC.

Scoring

Your score is the number of characters in your prompt. Fewer is better, like golf. A ten-character prompt beats a twenty-character one.

Spaces are free. They aren't counted, so write normally — "night planet" costs exactly the same as "nightplanet".

Only your best solve counts. Keep trying shorter prompts; a worse attempt never damages your score.

Off limits

You can't use the answer itself, anything containing it, or a short list of close synonyms and translations. Tap the off-limits line under the target to see that list. Emoji aren't allowed anywhere.

Associations are completely fair, and they're the whole point. On a hole where the answer is pig, the word bacon is legal — and finding routes like that is how you get a short score.

Rejected prompts cost you nothing. They don't count as a swing and they don't affect your score.

Par

Par is the middle score of everyone who has solved that hole. Beat it and you're under par; go over and you're over par.

Until enough people have played a hole, par is only an estimate and the screen says so. Once it settles, it's fixed for good.

Swings

You get 30 attempts per hole per day. That's generous enough to experiment, and tight enough that brute force isn't a strategy.

The leaderboard

Names and scores only. Your prompts are never shown to other players — the route you found stays yours.

The archive

Every past day stays playable. If you miss a day, or want to go back and beat an old score, it's all still there.

Keeping your scores

Scores are saved to the browser or device you play on. Sign in with Google from Settings and they'll follow you anywhere — otherwise your phone and your laptop count as two different players.

A tip to start

Describe the thing sideways rather than defining it. For a hole where the answer is moon, "orbits earth" works — but so does something much shorter, if you can find it.

Leaderboard