What Is Contexto? The New Word Game Craze That's Got People Talking
Created by WordFinder
What Is the Contexto Word Game?
Inspired by Semantle and created by a Brazilian developer, Contexto challenges players to find the mystery word of the day. It is a web-based game that you can play from any browser. Like other daily games, the puzzle resets at midnight local time with a new word for you to find.
This might sound similar to solving Wordle at first, but the game isn’t at all about putting the correct letters in the correct positions. Rather, you find the word based on contextual relevance and similarity. Contexto is powered by an AI algorithm, based on GloVe from the Stanford Natural Language Processing Group (NLP). It looks for relative proximity between words.
For example, the word “game” may appear often around words like “play” and “computer,” but rarely around words like “giraffe” and “porcelain.” If you enjoy the challenge of solving crossword puzzles, you may find a lot to like with the Contexto word game too.
How Do You Play Contexto?
Following the template popularized by Wordle, many daily word games limit you to just six guesses. If you don’t guess correctly within six guesses, you lose. That’s not the case here. You have unlimited guesses with Contexto and it’s the number of guesses that function as your daily score.
Type any single word into the text entry field and press enter.
You will see the position of the word relative to the secret word, which is number 1.
The lower the number, the closer you are to the answer. The higher the number, the further away you are.
Based on what you learn from your first guess, keep entering more guesses until you get the correct Contexto answer of the day.
After you solve the puzzle, you can click to see the top 500 words for today’s game.
We keep a full archive of past Wordle answers for your reference, but you can’t (officially) go back to replay any of the games. With Contexto, you can. For extra practice, open the menu by tapping on the three vertical dots in the corner and choose “Previous games.”
Available Settings and Options
No doubt, Contexto can be a challenging game. But, the actual game mechanics are very simple and easy to understand. As a result, the Settings menu is equally simple. Access it by opening the menu and choosing “Settings” from the list of options.
Language: Play in English or Portuguese
Theme: Enable a light background or dark mode
Tips: Choose how helpful the hints are. Easy hints are half the position to the closest guess so far. Medium hints are one rank higher than your closest word. Hard hints have a random position.
Sort by: Organize your list of guesses by similarity or the order in which you guessed them.
Other: Toggle whether to hide the countdown to the next word after you find the correct Contexto answer today.
What Do the Contexto Squares Mean?
One of the bigger reasons why Wordle went viral was because everyone was sharing their scores on social media. Everyone wanted to know what those gray, yellow and green squares meant, and they looked for daily Wordle hints to beat their friends and family each day.
Contexto follows a similar kind of dynamic, giving you a “share” button when you guess the secret word correctly. Your social share (with the Contexto squares as your score) then follows this format:
I played http://contexto.me #64 and got it in 47 guesses and 2 tips.
🟩🟩 15
🟨 14
🟥🟥 20
It includes the game number, how many guesses you took, and how many tips you used. Below that are a set of colored squares. These indicate the number of guesses you had in each range of positions.
Green squares: Positions 1 to 300
Yellow squares: Positions 301 to 1500
Red squares: Positions higher than 1500
Helpful Contexto Tips and Strategies
Absolutely puzzled and in need of some Contexto help? If you want to know how to win at Contexto, keep these key strategies in mind. You’ll find the daily secret word in no time.
Choose your guesses carefully. Playing the best starting words in Wordle sets you on the path to victory. With Contexto, you’ll want to vary categories and contexts until you get at least one “green” word. Try animals, common objects and abstract nouns, for example.
Reference a thesaurus. While Contexto is about finding contextually relevant words rather than just synonyms, a good thesaurus can help point you in the right direction. Remember that winning in Contexto is all about meaning and context.
Get a free tip. Tap on the three vertical dots to open the menu and choose to get a tip. As mentioned above, you can choose between easy, medium and hard tips in the settings. The “share” text when you find the answer will include the number of tips you used.
Stick (mostly) to nouns. The vast majority of Contexto answers are common nouns, like neighborhood (Contexto #1), diamond (Contexto #27), and text (Contexto #61). Aside from a small number of exceptions, like beautiful (Contexto #22), you can probably expect the secret word to be a noun.
Try a random word. Given the random nature of Contexto answers, it’s not a bad idea to use our random word generator to jog a few possible ideas. Remember that word length and letter position don’t matter, so just about anything could point you in the right direction.
Other Games Like Contexto
Wordle inspired a great number of related games like Quordle. Similarly, Contexto didn’t arise out of isolation either. If you’re looking for similar games to Contexto, here are some great options to consider.
Semantle plays almost exactly the same way as Contexto. Look for the secret word of the day based on relative similarity.
Semantle Junior is the same game as standard Semantle, but with easier words.
Dowsle gets you to find the secret word based both on meaning and spelling. The word is related to a celebrity or famous quote.
Redactle presents a redacted version of a random Wikipedia article. Enter words you think have been removed until you can figure out the title or subject of the article.
Finding the Right Words
At this point, Wordle’s popularity has obviously waned since its peak in early 2022. That said, the general public is as hungry as ever for fun word games to pass the time (and to challenge their friends). Based on the rising popularity of Contexto, particularly in the United States, it may be the big game of early 2023. Either way, you’ll want to have a world class word finder in your corner when the right words just aren’t coming to you.
Michael Kwan is a professional writer and editor with over 16 years of experience. Fueled by caffeine and WiFi, he's no stranger to word games and dad jokes.
