The Three Chainle Round Types: Two-Word, Three-Word and Close Meaning
Every Chainle table mixes three kinds of rounds, and each one asks a slightly different question.
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Rounds 01–03: the two-word bridge
The first three rounds each show a pair of clue words, and your job is to type one word that connects them both. The connection can be almost anything the two clues genuinely share: a part, a material, a shared meaning, a compound. The official journal traces these routes with worked examples:
| Clues | Answer | The bridge |
|---|---|---|
| piano, lock | key | a piano has keys; a lock uses a key |
| faucet, trumpet | valve | both contain a valve |
| tree, book | leaf | a tree has leaves; a book has leaves (pages) |
| snow, tennis | ball | snowball, tennis ball |
| candle, honeycomb | wax | both are made of wax |
Two of these five look like “part of” questions, one is a double meaning, one is a compound, and one is a shared material. That variety is the point: the game does not tell you which kind of bridge to look for, so part of the skill is classifying the pair before you answer.
Round 04: the three-word bridge
Round 04 gives three clues instead of two, and a single word has to connect all three. The official example is beach + hourglass + desert → sand. The extra clue is what makes this round feel harder: a word that satisfies two clues often fails the third, and the scoring formula treats that third clue as a weak link that drags the whole answer down.
Round 05: the close-meaning round
The final round changes the question entirely. You are given a meaning cue — a short description of a sense — and must find a different word that preserves that meaning. The official example gives calm with the cue “peaceful and untroubled”; the answer serene keeps exactly that sense.
The key word is different. Restating the cued word itself, or drifting to a merely related sense, is how this round punishes. The official guidance on the cue “intelligence” makes the distinction concrete: bright points to the clever/brilliant sense, while shiny belongs to another sense of the word entirely.
Close-meaning rounds are scored against a specific dictionary sense, using reviewed alternatives rather than open-ended estimates.
How the round type changes scoring
| Two-word bridge (01–03) | Three-word bridge (04) | Close meaning (05) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Input | two clue words | three clue words | one word + meaning cue |
| Task | connect both clues | connect all three | preserve the cued sense |
| Scoring input | per-clue connection strengths | per-clue connection strengths | reviewed alternatives + dictionary sense |
| Specificity adjustment | can apply | can apply | never applies |
The specificity adjustment trims the estimated strength of indefinite words such as “something” and broad evaluations such as “good” — but only in bridge rounds. In the close-meaning round, known opposites receive at most 100 points.
A note on pressure
None of the rounds is timed. The difficulty of round 04 and the precision demanded by round 5 are design choices, not time traps, so it always pays to consider two or three candidates before typing one. The strategy cluster turns that habit into a repeatable routine.