Surmise — a daily word puzzle
playsurmise.com
BOMBER is in. MEMBER is out. Why? Work out the hidden rule about how words are spelled. A new puzzle every day.

I’ve been working on a daily word game for awhile now, and I settled on something that has a spiritual connection to Zendo and Eleusis: “there’s a hidden rule, figure it out from evidence.”

It’s called Surmise. Each day there’s a hidden rule. You’re shown two similar words, and told that one of them is ‘in’ while the other is ‘out.’ You probe by presenting your own words, predict IN or OUT before each one, then declare when you’re confident that you’ve figured out the hidden rule. The game then gives you a five-word test. If you correctly categorize all five as in or out based on the hidden rule, you win. If not, you lose.

When you finish, you get a result you can share, similar to Wordle, without spoiling the rule for others:

SURMISE · practice 🟩🟩🟨🟨🟩 Solved in 5 REGRET was in. REGGAE was out. Why? www.playsurmise.com

It’s free to play in the browser, no install required.

Here’s a quick example round. First, the game shows an IN/OUT word pair, and asks the player to start probing.

Here, the player has made several guesses, and is about to declare that they know the rule and are ready to take the test.

Now the player has correctly categorized all five items on the test. They’ve won!

It’s still early, but initial feedback has been good. I would love it if a few of you would give the game a try and let me know your thoughts. I’m mainly hoping to learn your thoughts on:

Does the induction loop feel satisfying and fair, or does it lean too much on guessing? Are there rules or mechanics that feel off to you? Any bugs or confusing moments you run into. Anything else you’d like to share.

  • Zaxxon ( Zaxxon@lemmy.zip ) OP
    1·
    25 days ago

    What’s new in today’s build:

    A played streak with a 🔥. Any finished round keeps it going: daily, hard, practice or archive. It’s shown in the header, on the result screen, at the top of Statistics and on daily and hard share cards. Solved streaks are still kept separately for daily and hard.

    Challenge links. Every practice share card now invites a friend to play that exact puzzle through a link. New players who arrive this way are offered the tutorial first. (I really think this is cool and it’s something I’ve been wanting to implement for awhile…)

    Monthly recap and rule collection. Starting October 1st, players who had five or more rounds in a month get a shareable recap card, with a fuller version for supporters. “Rules you’ve met” is now grouped by type, with a mark when a type is complete.

    Yesterday’s daily is available for everyone (not just supporters). Free players can play it from the Archive screen, and the missed-day message points them there instead of at a locked archive.

    Smaller changes also went out: the version # in the Menu, Back pinned in Statistics and the Archive, more consistent link-style buttons in menus, reminders after skipping the tutorial, and the fixes behind the scenes.

    Try your September recap now: open http://www.playsurmise.com/?recap=2026-09 to see the card built from your own September play so far. It shows whatever you’ve played, even if that’s fewer than five rounds, and it doesn’t use up the real one, which still appears by itself on your first visit from October 1st.

    Practice rounds only count from 24 September, because that’s when the game started counting them. September’s card will show fewer than they actually played, which is why it carries the “rougher than usual” note.