Chainle scoring: what your points mean
By the Chainle independent edition · Reviewed October 24, 2026
Your Chainle guess earns a score from real word relationships. This independent Chainle edition uses 300-dimensional GloVe vectors and a general English vocabulary. A vector is a numerical representation learned from patterns in written language. Similar contexts tend to produce similar vectors. Scores reflect those patterns, so a sensible human connection can still surprise the model.
How your Chainle word becomes a score
- Chainle checks that your answer is one supported English word, different from the displayed clues.
- The model calculates cosine similarity between your word and each clue. Higher positive values indicate stronger contextual relationships.
- Chainle combines positive similarities using their harmonic mean. If any clue has zero or negative similarity, the combined value is zero.
- Your combined value is divided by the highest value available in the vocabulary, then multiplied by 1,000 and rounded.
For a single-clue Chainle round, the combined value is simply its positive similarity. Double links and triple links reward balance: an extremely close match to one clue cannot fully compensate for a missing connection to another.
Read the Chainle feedback
After submitting, Chainle shows your word, points, the best model link, and a separate similarity bar for every clue. The decimal beside each bar is cosine similarity, not a percentage of players. A negative relationship is displayed numerically while its bar stays empty.
Your Chainle word rank compares your answer with eligible vocabulary words for that clue set. Rank 1 means no supported word has a stronger combined value. Ties share a rank. It does not mean you beat every player; this edition has no global player leaderboard.
A worked Chainle calculation
Imagine a Chainle answer has similarities of 0.60 and 0.40. Their harmonic mean is 0.48. If the strongest vocabulary link has a combined value of 0.64, the answer earns 750 points. These are illustrative numbers, not fixed scores assigned to particular words. Actual Chainle answers are computed from the bundled model.
Five Chainle scores of 1,000, 980, 900, 1,000, and 940 add to 4,820. Share your total and colored squares after the last round. The share text leaves clues and answers out, so friends can play without spoilers.
Which words does Chainle accept?
The Chainle vocabulary contains 50,000 frequency-ordered English dictionary words with pretrained vectors. It combines the Wordnik word list with GloVe coverage. Many plurals and other inflections are included. A spelling error, phrase, displayed clue, or unsupported word leaves the round open without consuming your guess. This vocabulary is broad but does not cover every English word.
Why can Chainle scores feel unexpected?
GloVe models contextual association rather than dictionary definitions. Opposites sometimes occur in similar sentences, and a word with several meanings has one combined representation. Chainle feedback is an invitation to explore those relationships. It is not a definitive judgment of your vocabulary or reasoning.
Our Chainle model is dictionary-filtered, mean-centered, and quantized for browser use. The model metadata records sources and checksums. GloVe comes from Stanford's GloVe project; dictionary entries come from Wordnik. Attribution appears in our data notice.
Why does the Chainle model load in small files?
Chainle first loads a compressed dictionary and the current round. When you submit, your browser retrieves a small block containing the original 300-dimensional vector for that word. The harmonic-mean score is still calculated locally. A lossless rank index is prepared from the same model, so this faster delivery preserves existing points and word ranks. Previously used files are cached in this browser; restored feedback and results need no model download.
Is this the original Chainle scoring model?
No. This independent Chainle edition has its own vocabulary, preprocessing, clue bank, and schedule. Original Chainle uses its own scoring details, including adjustments described in the official FAQ. Scores across editions can differ even for identical words.
Do hints affect Chainle points?
Hints do not reduce your Chainle score. There is no timer. Your current round, feedback, hints, and practice session save in this browser when local storage is available. Reloading after a guess returns you to its feedback before advancing.
Try a Chainle practice session to see the similarities for yourself, or read our rules before your next daily puzzle.