How to play Comparle
Comparle gives you one word from another language every day. The same word for everyone, and a new one every night. You do not guess letters. You work out where the word comes from and what it means.
The game
I am an expat and I still run into words I do not know. From the context I guess what they mean. That is this game.
There is one word a day. It is the same word for every player, and it is a word English has no single word for. You get four rounds to place it, and then one chance to say what it means.
Nothing is installed and nothing is bought. Comparle runs in the browser, it is free, and you do not need an account to play.
Four rounds
Round one is always the language: which language is this word from? Rounds two to four are about the word itself — the feeling it carries or what it says literally, where you would hear it, and what it means.
Each round shows four answers, one at each compass point of a radar. You place a dot. On an answer when you are sure, between two when you are torn. A dot between two answers scores less than a confident hit and more than a dot on the wrong pole, so a hedge is a real move and not a surrender.
A round is worth up to 125 points. Four rounds are 500.
Help costs points
Two kinds of help, and both are paid for out of your own score.
Peek at others shows where other players put their dot in this round. It costs half of that round's points.
Listen plays the word out loud. During play that costs 30 points, once. After the reveal listening is free.
The last word
After the four rounds you may stake everything you have. You type what the word means, in one English word.
A hit doubles your score, and a small typo is forgiven. A word that is close to the meaning gives one and a half times your score. A miss halves it. You may also keep what you have and take none of that risk.
Before you answer you can buy back the four rounds' answers, one at a time. The first is free, then 25, 50 and 75 points. Those are charged before the multiplier, and they are charged even when you decide to keep your score.
After the reveal
A perfect day is 1000 points.
The reveal gives you the word's story, its pronunciation and the list of what counted as a correct translation. There is a share card as well: it shows how the four rounds went and it does not give the word away.
Play every day and your streak grows. A day you play late still counts for your score, but not for the streak.
Modes
Practice is a bank of words outside the calendar. Same four rounds, same last word, no waiting for tomorrow.
Blind hides the verdicts. You play all four rounds without being told how each one went, and the whole word is settled at the end, round by round. You can switch back whenever you want.
When the day turns
A new word goes up every day at midnight, Europe/Amsterdam. Yesterday's word keeps its own page, with the meaning, the story and the pronunciation on it, so nothing that has already run is lost.
Two editions
English is at en.comparle.app and Dutch at nl.comparle.app; comparle.app sends you to one of the two. Each edition has its own words and its own calendar, so the two are not translations of each other and your progress is kept per language.