Semantic Games

Synonym chains represent the earliest formal exploration of semantic networks in game form. Popularized by Dmitri Borgmann in his 1967 book "Beyond Language," he demonstrated that seemingly opposite words could connect through carefully constructed synonym chains. Borgmann's famous example transformed "black" into "white" through a sequence of small semantic shifts, as shown in the second image.

These puzzles reveal meaning's gradient nature and identify key semantic pivot points. In Borgmann's examples, critical junctures occur when "concealed" (negative) connects to "snug" (positive) and when "insolent" (negative) links to "proud" (positive). This led Borgmann to conclude that "any word whatsoever may be converted into its opposite" through such chains.

In 1987, computer scientist Ron Hardin at Bell Telephone Laboratories pioneered computational approaches using The New Collins Thesaurus. His work generated thousands of examples, demonstrating how virtually any word could transform into its opposite through 4-7 synonym steps.

A British television quiz show hosted by Victoria Coren Mitchell that has developed a cult following for its exceedingly challenging puzzles. Named after an E.M. Forster quote imploring readers to "only connect," the show tests teams on finding relationships between seemingly unrelated clues.

Its most famous round, the "Connecting Wall," directly inspired the NYT's Connections game. Teams face 16 clues that must be sorted into 4 groups of 4 with a common link—with just 2½ minutes to solve it. The connections are notoriously obscure, from literary references to wordplay (like "words that can precede 'man'"). Other rounds include finding sequences and deciphering phrases with vowels removed. Often described as "the hardest quiz on TV," Only Connect celebrates lateral thinking and the joy of discovering hidden patterns.

Official BBC Page

A daily word categorization game published by The New York Times. From a grid of 16 words, players must sort them into four groups of four words sharing a hidden connection. The challenge lies in figuring out what those connections are—they might be straightforward themes like "dog breeds" or tricky wordplay like "words that can precede 'ball'".

Each puzzle includes one easy category (color-coded yellow), two medium categories (green and blue), and one tricky category (purple). Players get four chances to make mistakes before the game ends. Connections became an instant hit after its 2023 release, quickly becoming the NYT's second-most popular game after Wordle.

Two other notable 4×4 grid games exist. Red Herring (2014) predated Connections with a twist—players sort words into three categories while avoiding four unrelated "red herring" distractors. PuzzGrid (2018), inspired by Only Connect, offers thousands of user-contributed puzzles with similar mechanics but greater community involvement.

NYT Connections Red Herring PuzzGrid

A competitive team-based party game where "spymasters" provide one-word clues that must connect multiple target words while avoiding opponents' words. The game transforms semantic associations into strategic competition, challenging players to compress multiple concepts into a single, precise clue.

Codenames stands out by turning word association into a social experience—where communication precision and shared cultural context become crucial gameplay elements. The core challenge lies in finding conceptual bridges that connect several words at once while avoiding misleading teammates toward opponents' words or the game-ending "assassin" word.

The game's genius lies in exploring communication ambiguity. Every clue represents a delicate balance between breadth (covering multiple words) and precision (avoiding unintended associations). This tension creates memorable moments of triumph when teammates instantly understand a clever connection, or comedy when a seemingly clear clue is wildly misinterpreted.

Official Website

A party board game published by Hasbro in 1989 where players describe a target word without using certain "taboo" words listed on the card. Players must find alternative paths to convey concepts when obvious descriptive routes are blocked.

Unlike connection-focused semantic games, Taboo emphasizes what players cannot say. This inverts typical word association by requiring lexical avoidance rather than bridge-building, testing players' linguistic flexibility under time pressure. When primary descriptive paths are blocked, players must access alternative expressions to communicate effectively.

Gameplay creates natural humor through these constraints. Cultural knowledge and shared references become valuable tools, as effective clues often depend on the specific group's common experiences.

A semantic word-guessing game from 2022, when Wordle was a viral phenomenon, Semantle introduced semantic distance as a counterpoint to Wordle's letter-based feedback. It used "vectors" from Google's Word2Vec project—strings of numbers mapping words in multidimensional space. Before ChatGPT's launch, the idea that a computer could evaluate the similarity between any two words still felt somewhat mystical.

The game earned the nickname "the Dark Souls of Wordle" for its difficulty. After each guess, players receive a similarity score (0-100) showing how semantically close their word is to the target. Word2Vec's limitations define the game—its neural network embeddings poorly classify words with multiple meanings and reveal connections that don't match human intuition, often circling players around the target word. With around 200,000 daily players at its peak, Semantle attracted an audience who endured navigating these beguiling word relationships.

Semantle inspired several variations that attempted to remedy its core frustrations. Contexto, created by Brazilian developer Nildo Junior, gained popularity in Brazil in late 2022 with its more intuitive interface. Another variant, Pimantle, uses a 2D visualization that plots guesses relative to the target word, creating a spatial map that addresses Semantle's notorious 'blind orbiting' problem.

Semantle Contexto Pimantle

A daily word-chain game where players connect two words by building a network of related terms. Imagine a start word in the bottom-left corner and an end word in the top-right corner of a blank canvas. Your challenge: add intermediate words that form semantic bridges between them, creating a continuous chain from start to finish.

When you add a word, Linxicon uses a Sentence-BERT model to automatically connect it with any related words already on the board if their similarity exceeds 38%. You win when a complete chain forms between the start and end words. What makes Linxicon special is its visual network-building approach—you literally see the semantic web grow with each addition, and there's no single correct solution.

Note in the screenshot that the game does not link "will" to "inheritance," perhaps because it only considers the sense of intent or desire.

Official Website

A daily puzzle where players find chains between seemingly unrelated words, like connecting "sugar" to "peace" through "sweet" and "harmony". The game combines embedding vectors with weighted graph traversal to model nuanced relationships across a vast network of 1.1M words with 60M connections.

In Other Words transforms word association into an elegant daily challenge. Each day presents two distant words, challenging players to build a bridge between them using semantic stepping stones. The game's core insight: virtually any two English words can connect through related meanings in seven steps or fewer.

Beyond recognizing connections, the game rewards strategic thinking about which words serve as effective bridges. Skilled players identify "conceptual hubs" that efficiently connect disparate semantic territories. The most satisfying moments come from discovering surprising associations that elegantly link seemingly unrelated concepts.

Official Website App Store

A space-themed arcade game that reimagines word puzzles as physical challenges. Players launch words through mesmerizing fields of geometric swarms, transforming traditional word matching into spatial gameplay while navigating obstacle courses and deciphering partially hidden targets like "v**il*a".

OtherWordly merges semantic play with arcade action, creating a unique hybrid engaging both linguistic and spatial reasoning. Players navigate vibrant cosmic environments where words become physical objects to launch, guide, and manipulate.

What distinguishes OtherWordly is its real-time difficulty adjustment that matches each player's skill across both word puzzles and arcade challenges, ensuring a personalized experience regardless of vocabulary or gaming prowess.

Official Website App Store

A browser-based game where you navigate from one word to another through a chain of semantically related words—like a round of golf played with concepts. The game presents two words (the tee and the hole), and your task is to find a path between them in as few steps as possible.

At each step, Word Golf suggests possible "next hops" based on semantic associations powered by the GloVe model. For example, connecting "pilot" to "pineapple" might require a path like "pilot → ship → container → refrigerator → snack → canned → pineapple". Unlike classic word ladders that change one letter at a time, Word Golf lets you jump between related concepts, creating a game that feels like exploring a vast semantic map.

Official Website

An online "massively multiplayer word association game" created by indie game developer Kyle Gabler. The premise is beautifully simple: when shown a word, a player types the first thing that comes to mind. These collective associations combine into a giant semantic network that anyone can browse and explore.

The cloud started with just one word, "volcano," and quickly grew to millions of connections. What makes it fascinating is seeing the collective unconscious reveal itself—the three most frequently submitted words were "sex," "me," and "money," in that order. The game provides immediate feedback about whether your word association is common or unique, making each submission both personal and part of a larger social experiment.

Web Site

Two AI-powered word association games released by Google in 2018 to showcase their semantic technology. At the time, having an AI realize that "shell" was a close conceptual match to "turtle," as shown in the screenshot, was an interesting way to have a game's word objects respond to typed words.

The game featured one mechanic with blocks to explode and another with a list that rearranged. It was powered by Google's Universal Sentence Encoder and could accept typed words and phrases.

Official Website