Chainle terminology · glossary
Weakest link
Definition: The lowest of the per-clue similarity strengths in a round; it is weighted 20% of the score, so one missing connection drags the total sharply.
Examples
- Strengths of 90, 85 and 10 give a weakest link of 10 — the round score collapses.
When you submit a bridge word, Chainle scores it against every clue separately, producing one strength (0-100) per clue. The weakest link is simply the lowest of those strengths — the connection your word handles worst.
It matters because of how the score is built: 80% of the round score comes from the geometric mean of all the strengths, and the remaining 20% comes from the weakest link alone. A geometric mean already punishes imbalance, and adding the weakest-link term doubles down: if your word fits two clues at 90 and 85 but only 10 for the third, both the mean and the weakest-link term collapse, and the round score falls far below what the first two clues suggested.
The design intent is fairness to the puzzle: a bridge word should genuinely connect all the clues, not just most of them.
Why it matters
The weakest link is why “check every clue before submitting” is the most repeated Chainle tip. Most low scores are not caused by a bad word overall but by one ignored clue — the near-miss pattern — so scanning all clues for your candidate is worth more than any vocabulary trick.