Games like Semantle and Contexto
Last checked: 15 October 2026
These daily word games all ask one question: how related are two words? Some hide a secret word and score each guess by meaning. Others give you two words and ask you to link them. I checked every game below on the date above. Stonele is mine, so it comes last.
Guess the hidden word by meaning
Semantle
The best-known of these. You “guess the secret word”, and each guess is scored by how semantically similar it is to the answer, so you steer by meaning rather than letters. In English and Spanish, with an archive. Semantle Junior is the gentler version, where secret words are “typically nouns or very common terms”.
Contexto
“Find the secret word. You have unlimited guesses.” Instead of a score, each guess gets a position in a ranking of every word, so you can see how far away you are. In English, Portuguese and Spanish, with past games and an unlimited mode.
Pimantle
Semantle’s idea drawn as a map: “closer to the center means more similar”. You can see other players’ guesses on the plot as the day goes on, and there’s an archive.
Cemantle
“Find the secret word by trying to get as semantically close as possible.” The English edition of the French game Cémantix. It shows yesterday’s word, so you can see what you missed.
Link two words
Linxicon
“Link 2 random words together by creating a chain of meaning!” The closest relative to Stonele: one pair a day, and you can practise as much as you like.
Rechain
Get from a start word to an end word through hidden compound-word links. Daily, with an archive, an easy mode and streaks, and no account required.
Bridj
“Connect two words… using a bridge of your own words”, placed from letter tiles, so it plays more like a small crossword than a meaning game.
Get from one thing to another, differently
Weaver
“Transform one word into another, one letter at a time”: the classic word ladder, daily, with an archive. The same site has Weaver X and Subtext.
The Wiki Game Daily
“Race from one Wikipedia page to another using the fewest clicks.” A path puzzle where the links are Wikipedia’s, with a game archive.
What “close in meaning” means in these games
Most of these games score words with word vectors. A computer reads a huge amount of text, notices which words keep similar company, and turns every word into a list of numbers. Words with similar lists count as close, so in Stonele “boat” is close enough to “shark” to make a step: the link is meaning, not spelling. That’s why the scores sometimes surprise you: the games measure association, not dictionary definitions.
Where Stonele fits
Stonele gives you a start word and a target word, and you lay a path of words between them. Each word has to be close in meaning to the one before it. A good word becomes a stone, a bad one sinks and costs a try, and fewer tries is better. Everyone gets the same pair each day, and you see how your path ranks against everyone who played. It uses ConceptNet Numberbatch word vectors plus a few hundred hand-checked links (see the FAQ). It’s free, with no sign-up and no ads.
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