Cemantle hides one word each day. It scores guesses by semantic similarity rather than spelling and gives each one a temperature from −100°C to 100°C: cold, cool, warm, hot, or very hot. A guess among the 1,000 closest words also receives a per-mille rank (‰), which shows how near it is to the answer.
Cemantle is the English version of the French game Cémantix, created by the same author. The site also reveals the previous day's answer.
- Type any English word and submit. No letter patterns or length constraints apply.
- Read the feedback: a temperature in degrees Celsius, an emoji tier, and a ‰ rank out of 1000 once you break into the top thousand words.
- Use warm guesses to steer toward synonym clusters. The ranked table preserves your entire search path.
- Continue narrowing until you reach ‰1000, the ? marker for the target word, then return the next day for a new puzzle.
Why the game works
Cemantle strips away letter mechanics and runs purely on semantic geometry. It uses word2vec vectors to compute similarity, crediting Semantle for the original concept and Google's word2vec for the model. The temperature scale creates mid-game texture absent from letter-based puzzles: you can stay in the ? range for ten guesses while circling a concept. The page displays how many players have already solved today's word, quietly converting a solo challenge into a shared race.
Reading the feedback
Each guess appears in a ranked table showing its temperature in °C, emoji tier, ‰ rank once it reaches the top 1000, and a progress bar. Ten ? icons mark the cold zone before the first warm word appears. The site also has a history tab, a word-cloud view of your guesses, and a Wikipedia quiz that asks you to uncover a hidden article.
The daily word mode gives you one numbered secret word each day and shows a live count of players who have found it. The Wikipedia quiz presents a similar challenge through a hidden Wikipedia page and appears alongside the daily puzzle. The history and cloud tabs let you replay earlier days and turn your guesses into a word cloud. A link also leads to Cémantix, the French original by the same author.
Open with broad hub words (life, place, machine) to locate which semantic region is warm before refining your angle. Trust the ‰ rank over temperature: degrees flatter entire neighborhoods, but the per-mille rank confirms whether you are inside the final thousand. When two words both run hot, guess their common hypernym. The vector space rewards the category above its members.
Common questions
How does scoring work?
Each guess receives a semantic temperature in °C and an emoji tier. The thousand words closest to the target also get a ‰ rank out of 1000, with 1000‰ marking the target itself.
Is it related to Semantle?
Yes. The site credits Semantle for the concept and Google's word2vec for the semantic model. It is the English sibling of the French cémantix.
What if I never find it?
The next day publishes the answer, and a see-the-nearest-words option closes each finished day.
Do I need an account?
No. The game loads and accepts guesses with no sign-in required.