How to play Typical
Typical asks a simple question, like An animal or Something made of metal, and behind it sits a ranked list of hundreds of answers: the most typical answer at the top, the rarest at the bottom. You do not win by being clever. You win by thinking of what everyone else would say.
The goal
Every question is worth the same target: 500 points. Reach it in as few guesses as you can. The best anyone can do is seven guesses, because even the top answers do not pay 500 points in six. Most people need somewhere between nine and fifteen.
How points work
Points depend only on an answer's rank in the list, never on how long the list is, so 500 is exactly as far away on every question. The most typical answer pays the most; the long tail pays almost nothing.
| Rank | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 7 | 14 | 21 | 50 | 100 | 183 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Points | 120 | 98 | 82 | 70 | 62 | 50 | 33 | 27 | 17 | 9 | 2 |
While you play, a guess never shows its exact rank, only how hot it was: Bullseye for the top three, Hot for the next dozen, Warm for the top fifty, Cool and Cold further down. The exact ranks come out once the round is over.
Guessing
- Only answers count as guesses. A word that is not on the list says "not found" and costs you nothing. Try again.
- Spelling is forgiving. Plurals, common misspellings and obvious synonyms find the answer they point at: puppy finds Dog, kitten finds Cat. If a typo could mean one answer, the game puts that answer into the field for you; press Enter again to play it, or type something else.
- Each answer counts once. Guessing Dog twice does not pay twice.
- You can give up. The round ends, you keep the points you have, and the list opens: the top answers you missed, and every answer in order.
An example
The question is An animal. You type dog: Bullseye, rank 1, 120 points. You type cat: Bullseye, 98 points. That is 218 after two guesses. Elephant is Hot, horse is Hot, lion is Hot: around 380. Now the easy ones are gone, and the question is what the next most typical animal is. Platypus is on the list, but it is Cold and pays a handful of points. Cow pays far more. Thinking of what everyone else would say gets you to 500 in eight or nine; thinking of clever animals takes twenty.
The verdict
When you reach 500, you see where you stand among everyone who played the same question: more typical than 72% of today's players. Next to each of your guesses stands how many players had it too, and the whole list opens, 1 to the end, with a mark on every answer you found. The comparison appears once ten people have finished the question.
Two a day, one a week
Every day brings two questions. Play them in a row; the second opens after the first. Solve both to keep your streak going. New questions arrive at midnight UTC. The weekly challenge is a harder question that stays open until Sunday. The archive shows the last six weeks of questions and your own results.
What it costs
Nothing. There is no account to make and nothing to install. Your results stay in your own browser. The site is paid for by advertising, which runs only if you agree to it; the privacy policy says exactly what that means.