How to play

The basics

A new secret word every day. Guess it by how it sounds.

Each guess is a ping. You get unlimited pings, and there is no way to lose.

Spelling doesn't matter

This is the part that trips everyone up.

Phonemo only listens to sound. It ignores letters completely.

• KNIGHT and NIGHT are spelled differently and sound identical. Phonemo treats them as the same word.
• THROUGH and THOUGH are spelled almost identically and sound nothing alike. Phonemo treats them as far apart.

Guess with your ears, not your eyes.

The number

Every ping comes back with a rank. It is your word's position out of nearly 40,000 words, sorted by how close it sounds to the answer.

• 1 is the answer
• 112 means only 111 words in the language sound closer than yours
• 31,206 means you are nowhere near it

Lower is better.

The colors

Your pings sort automatically, closest at the top. Your most recent ping stays pinned above the list so you never lose track of it.

The unlock

One clue is hidden from you: how many syllables the answer has.

Get any ping into the top 500 and it unlocks. You will see the syllable count for the rest of the game.

You cannot ask for it and you cannot narrow in on it. You earn it by getting close.

The ping number where you unlocked it goes on your share card. That is the number worth bragging about, because it measures how fast you found your way in.

Your streak

Progress saves in your browser automatically. Close the tab, come back later, and you will pick up exactly where you left off.

Your streak stays in this browser on this device. Clearing site data clears your saved progress.

Reset

A new word every day at midnight, your local time.

What counts as a word

Standard English words only. No proper nouns, no abbreviations, no acronyms. If Phonemo does not recognize a word, the ping does not count against you.

Profanity, slurs, and sexual words are not allowed.

One more thing

It is pronounced foh-NEE-mo.