How do you play Speciedle?

Type an animal into the box and lock it in. Every guess is scored from 0 to 100 by how closely related it is to the hidden mystery species, and shown with its rank in the pool and the deepest clade it shares with the target. Use those hints to guess closer animals until you find the exact species.

How is each guess scored?

Guesses are scored on evolutionary relatedness — how recently your animal and the mystery species shared a common ancestor. The more recent the shared ancestor, the higher the score, from 0 for a distant branch of the animal tree up to 100 for the exact species.

What do the colours mean?

Each guess is tinted by how close it ranks: boiling is the top 5 closest, hot is the top 25, warm is the top 100, cool is the top 300, and cold is anything beyond that. Found it means you guessed the exact species.

How often is there a new Speciedle puzzle?

There is a new mystery species every day. The puzzle resets at midnight your local time, and your progress and stats are saved automatically in your browser.

Is Speciedle free to play?

Yes. Speciedle is a free daily species guessing game with no accounts and nothing to install. It is kept running with a little help from ads on the page.

How to Play Speciedle

Speciedle is a daily guessing game. Every day there's one mystery animal, and your job is to figure out what it is. This is done by guessing other animals and seeing how closely related each one is to the hidden species.

You have unlimited guesses, so the objective is to guess the animal in as few tries as possible.

The basics

Type an animal into the box. Anything from the pool works: dog, octopus, emperor penguin. As you type, matching species pop up in a dropdown; click one or press Enter to lock it in.
Read the score. Every guess gets a number from 0 to 100. The higher the score, the more recently your guess and the mystery species shared a common ancestor. Guess the exact species and you score 100.
Use the rank. Alongside the score, each guess shows its rank out of the whole pool — like #3 of 670. Rank is often the clearest signal you'll get: #3 means only two species in the entire game are closer than your guess.
Follow the shared clade. Each guess tells you the deepest group (clade) it shares with the target — Mammalia, then Carnivora, then Felidae as you close in. That group is a built-in hint: narrow it down and you're narrowing down the answer.
Keep guessing until you find it — or hit Give up to reveal the answer and see the closest species you missed.

The guess box showing a dropdown of penguin species, each with a small photo and scientific name. — Start typing and matching species appear with a thumbnail and scientific name — click one or press Enter to lock in your guess.

What the colours mean

Every guess is tinted by how close it ranks:

Boiling — top 5 closest. You're basically there.
Hot — top 25. Right family.
Warm — top 100. Right neighbourhood.
Cool — top 300. Same broad group.
Cold — beyond that. A distant branch of the animal tree.
Found it — the exact species. That's the win.

Six guesses against a lion, from a boiling tiger at rank #2 down to a cold cockroach at #531, each row showing its score, rank and shared clade. — The same round, warmest first: each row shows the score, its rank in the pool and the clade it shares with the target — from a boiling tiger down to an ice-cold cockroach.

Reading the tree

As you guess, Speciedle draws a cladogram, a little family tree of your guesses. Each guess branches off the trunk at the clade it shares with the mystery species, and the trunk steps inward as those clades get narrower. The deepest branch is your best guess so far, and the answer sits just below it. Watching the tree narrow is the fastest way to feel how close you're getting.

A cladogram whose trunk steps inward through Bilateria, Amniota, Laurasiatheria, Carnivora, Felidae and Panthera, with the mystery species waiting just past the deepest branch. — The trunk steps inward at each shared clade. The deepest branch — here *Panthera*, shared with the tiger — is the closest guess, and the mystery species hangs just beyond it.

Hover over (or tap) any underlined clade name — like Laurasiatheria — for a quick English definition.

A tooltip over an underlined clade name giving a short plain-English definition of Laurasiatheria. — Hover over (or tap) any underlined clade name for a quick plain-English definition.

Hover or tap a species anywhere in the game for its group, and scientific name.

A floating card over the guess list showing a large photo of a tiger, its group Mammals, the name Panthera tigris and the photo credit. — Hovering (or tapping) any species pops up a larger photo along with its group, scientific name and image credit.

A new puzzle every day

The puzzle resets at midnight, your local time. Come back tomorrow for a fresh mystery species.
Your progress is saved automatically on your device, so you can close the tab and pick up where you left off.
Finished a round? Hit Share result to post your emoji-square trail (no spoilers) and your guess count.
Open Stats (top right on the home page) to track your games played, win rate, current streak, best streak, and how many guesses you usually need.

The result banner reading Solved in 7 guesses — today's species was Lion (Panthera leo) — with Share result and Show closest species buttons. — Crack it and the answer is revealed, with a **Share result** button for your spoiler-free emoji trail.

The statistics panel showing games played, solved, win percentage, current and best streak, and a histogram of guesses needed. — The Stats panel keeps your played and solved counts, win rate, streaks and a breakdown of how many guesses you usually take.

Good luck!