Hot & Cold

How to play

There’s a secret word, and everyone in the room hunts for it at the same time. Type any word and the game tells you how close it is in meaning, as a rank. Rank 1 is the secret word itself, rank 2 is the closest word to it, and so on down. The bigger the number, the colder you are.

Say the secret word is “beach”. “Sand” might come in at 4, “holiday” at 30 and “tractor” somewhere around 4,000. There are no letters to guess and no spelling clues. You just follow the warmth.

Every guess from every player lands on one shared board, sorted by rank, and everyone can see it. That’s the heart of the game: a rival’s hot guess is a clue for you too. A word that’s already on the board can’t be sent again, so it belongs to whoever thought of it first. You can send a new guess every second or so, as many as you like.

The round ends the moment someone finds rank 1. If nobody does before time runs out, the word is revealed anyway. Either way, the reveal shows the secret word and the ten words closest to it, which is usually when someone says “oh, of course”. Each round has a new word, and after the last one the highest total wins.

Scoring

• Finding the word: +1000, plus up to +500 more depending on how much time is left on the clock.
• Everyone else scores by their own best guess of the round:
  • in the top 10: +400
  • in the top 50: +250
  • in the top 300: +120
  • in the top 1,000: +50

Only your best guess counts, so a cold guess never costs you anything.

Hints

If the board is still cold, the game helps out. One minute into the round, it drops a hint word onto the board, fairly far from the secret word, somewhere around rank 300. At two minutes it drops a second one, much closer, around rank 50. Hints land on the board like any other word, so everyone sees them at the same moment. They work the same way when you play alone.

An example round

Four friends on a video call. The secret word is “beach”, and of course none of them knows that yet.

Everyone types whatever comes to mind. Hannah tries “dog”, which lands at 2,914. Ravi tries “summer”: 41. Tom’s “car” is somewhere in the thousands. Megan’s “water” comes in at 19. The board sorts itself, and suddenly all four of them are staring at the same two warm words.

Then it stalls. Ravi tries “swimming”, Tom tries “pool”, and nothing gets much warmer. At the one-minute mark the first hint drops: “postcard”. Not hot, but it points somewhere. Tom puts summer, water and postcard together and sends “ocean”: 6. Megan sees it and tries “sand”: 4.

Hannah hasn’t had a single warm guess all round. She looks at sand, ocean and summer at the top of the board and types “beach”. Rank 1, round over.

Hannah gets +1000 and a good part of the speed bonus. Megan’s best was 4 and Tom’s was 6, so both get +400. Ravi’s best was 41, which is +250. Then the reveal lists the ten closest words, and Tom finds out “seaside” was sitting at number 2 the whole time.

These ranks are made up for the example. The real ones depend on the word.

Playing alone

You don’t need a group for this one. Open a room and start it on your own: you get the same board, the same timer and the same two hints. It makes a good warm-up while friends are still joining, or a quick puzzle with your morning coffee.

Each language has its own secret words and its own word list, all real, everyday words in that language. A Turkish or French room isn’t the English game in translation.

Tips

Start wide. Make your first few guesses very different from each other: a place, a feeling, an object, something you do. One of them will be warmer than the rest, and that tells you which way to go.

Read the whole board, not just your own guesses. The best clue is often someone else’s. If a rival’s word is sitting at 12, think about what lives near it.

Guess freely. Only your best rank counts, so a cold guess costs nothing. Sometimes the quickest way to learn what the word isn’t is to try something you’re half sure is wrong.

Be quick with the obvious ones. A word can only go on the board once. When the board is clearly heading somewhere, the next obvious guess goes to whoever types it first.

Think in meanings, not spellings. Words that look alike aren’t close because of it. “Beach” and “bench” have nothing to do with each other. Think about where the thing is, what it’s for and what usually goes with it.

Free rooms and Guezzer Pass

Free rooms play 3 rounds of 3 minutes each. With Guezzer Pass, the host can also choose 1 or 5 rounds, and rounds of 2 or 5 minutes.

When it works best

Hot & Cold takes 1 to 12 players, and a free game lasts around ten minutes, often less, because a round ends as soon as someone finds the word. It’s a calm, wordy game that suits crossword people and people who just like throwing words around in equal measure. Everyone types on their own phone, so it plays just as well on a video call as round a table.

With a big group the board fills up fast, and the rounds get shorter and more frantic. With two or three, there’s more time to think, and the hints matter more.

Questions people ask

How is it different from the classic hot-and-cold game?

It’s the same idea: getting warmer or colder as you close in. Here the hidden thing is a word, the temperature is an exact rank, and everyone searches at once on the same board.

What counts as a word?

Ordinary words in the room’s language. If the game doesn’t recognise something, such as a typo or a word that doesn’t exist, it tells you, and you try another. Different forms of a word, like “beaches” for “beach”, are usually treated as the same word.

Is the secret word the same for everyone?

Yes. Everyone in the room is hunting for the same word, and there’s a new one each round.