What is Metazooa?
Metazooa is a daily web puzzle where you identify a Mystery Animal through up to 20 guesses. Each incorrect guess returns taxonomic feedback—kingdom, phylum, class, order, and so on—showing which ranks your guess shares with the target animal. The more taxonomic overlap, the closer you are.
How to play Metazooa
- Open the Metazooa page and begin the daily puzzle.
- Type the name of any animal as your first guess.
- Read the taxonomic feedback that appears after each wrong answer.
- Use that feedback to refine your next guess, narrowing the field by shared or excluded ranks.
- Continue submitting guesses until you name the Mystery Animal or reach the 20-guess limit.
A new Mystery Animal appears once per day.
Reading taxonomic feedback
Wrong guesses reveal how many taxonomic ranks—kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus—your animal shares with the answer. More shared ranks mean your guess is taxonomically closer. This feedback narrows the field step by step, turning each miss into useful information about the target's place in the animal family tree.
The game tracks your remaining guesses out of 20 and does not reset until the next daily puzzle.
Strategy tips
Guess animals from different branches of the tree early on to reveal broad taxonomic splits. Once you know a shared class or order, pick animals within that group to refine genus or species.
Taxonomic feedback rewards closeness in classification rather than superficial similarity. A bat and a whale share more taxonomy with each other than a bat shares with a bird, even though bats fly. Think in terms of evolutionary relationships.
Common questions
How many guesses do I get?
You receive 20 guesses per daily puzzle.
Which taxonomy does Metazooa use?
The game follows NCBI taxonomy. Other sources, including Wikipedia, may classify certain animals differently. If feedback seems unexpected, the difference often lies in competing taxonomic frameworks.