How to Play Contexto: Best Tips and Tricks for this New Word Game

If you love the daily word games online, but a simple letter guessing or testing your vocabulary skills seems shallow to you, consider playing Contexto once. Instead of slowly revealing each letter like in Wordle, Contexto gives players a challenge to guess the whole answer purely through its context and meaning. So, we break down what Contexto is and how to play the game using proper strategies.

What is Contexto?

Contexto is a simple word-guessing game that focuses purely on semantic similarity. This means how relatable your guessed word is to the actual Contexto answer of the day. One of the special things about this game is that when you play Contexto, you get unlimited guesses and hints. 

As you make a guess while playing Contexto, the AI model checks its context with the answer and ranks it accordingly. The lower the rank, the closer you are to the real answer. This AI model is trained on tons of data and words on the internet, so the words you guess don’t need to have a similar meaning to get a closer rank. Instead, the ranking is based on how often your word and the actual answer are used together in sentences.

How to Play the Contexto Game?

Accessing Contexto is pretty straightforward, and you don’t need to install anything extra. Simply open your favorite browser – Chrome, Edge, Firefox, or Safari and search for Contexto game. Once you enter the official website, follow the steps below to play the game:

  • Type any word in the text box on the screen and press Enter.
  • The word will then be displayed below with a specific background color and a number.
  • The color can be red, orange, or green, depending on the number or the rank. 
  • Red can appear for guesses with the number 1501 and above, orange for numbers 301-1500, and green for numbers 1-300. 
  • So, you may start playing Contexto game with some vague topics to know what the context of the word is, and once you find a green color, keep guessing specific items or words to get to the final Contexto answer, which is ranked 1. 
How to Play Contexto NYT Game

Strategies to Solve Contexto Easily

Typing in random words might seem easier in the beginning, but it isn’t the most effective way of solving this puzzle. If you’re aware of a few smart tips and tricks for solving Contexto, you can solve it easily in the least number of guesses. So, here’s what you should keep in mind:

1. Start Broad, Then Narrow Down

Play Contexto with a few broad guesses that can tell a lot about a certain category. Using words like “thing”, “food”, “animal”, “place”, “object”, and “emotion” can help you narrow down the context.

Once you get to the numbers below 1000, try to zoom in and use words that are closest to your guess with the least rank. So, if your least-ranked guess is food, try using words like kitchen, meal, restaurant, fruits, and so on. 

2. Use Nouns first

A great way to narrow down the context is by guessing noun words. So, if your least ranked guess was object, you can try using words like phone, chair, bottle, whereas if it was people, go with doctor, teacher, engineer, and so on. 

Keep in mind that when you play the Contexto game, you should always start with the nouns first until you reach the orange or green categories. Once you find what context the answer is close to, try guessing a couple of verbs or adjectives to see if they’re closer than nouns. 

3. Use Hints Wisely

In Contexto, there’s an option to check the hints. However, make sure you use them only when you’re stuck; otherwise, you won’t get the satisfaction of solving these puzzles by yourself. You can play Contexto at different difficulty levels, such as easy, normal, or hard. It has a hint setting to choose whether you want to get them at an easy, normal, or hard difficulty level.

Using Hints in Contexto NYT Game

Using hints on the easy level gives you a word that is half the rank of your best guess. On normal difficulty, you get a word one rank less than your best guess. Whereas on a hard difficulty level, you get a word at a random rank. 

4. Experiment with Random Words At Times

Sometimes, you may get stuck at a certain rank, and you might not be bring up more words in the same context. Moreover, it may also happen that different forms of the root word can get ranked differently. Examples of this are travel and traveler or work and worker.

So, you may see that if you had guessed music, other words like song, instrument, or band might be closer to the answer. Similarly, if guessing the word city gives a lower rank, try using capital, village, and similar terms. You can also use the random word generator to get ideas when stuck. 

Best Starting Words for Contexto

While playing Contexto, your aim should be to use broader and generic words to begin with. This is going to help you figure out the domain, aka context, first. Here are some useful starting words (as well as themes) that can help you understand the context easily:

  • Thing
  • Person
  • Place
  • Animal
  • Food
  • Object
  • Emotion
  • Work
  • Home
  • Travel
  • Nature
  • Game
  • School

That is how you play Contexto simply by using your intuition and logic. So, have you checked out the answers for today’s Contexto yet, or have you solved it already?

What are the best words to start with in Contexto?

Thing, Person, Place, Animal, Food, Object, Emotion, Work, Home, Travel, Nature are the best words or themes to start the Contexto game.

Can you play previous Contexto games?

Yes, you can play previous Contexto games by selecting the previous games option in the menu tab on the official website