Chainle Alternative Answers: More Than One Way to Score 1,000
There is rarely a single correct Chainle answer — featured words, alternatives and estimates all live on the scoreboard.
On this page
Three kinds of accepted answers
A Chainle round rarely has exactly one good answer, and the scoring system reflects that with three tiers:
| Tier | What it is | Score |
|---|---|---|
| Featured answer | the round’s headline word | full 1,000 |
| Selected alternatives | reviewed words the system recognises | full 1,000 |
| Estimates | any vocabulary word, scored by connection strengths | 0–1,000; can reach 1,000 in the current version |
“Recognized answers” means the first two tiers together, and they always earn the full 1,000.
The official examples are featured answers
The worked examples published for the game — piano + lock → key, faucet + trumpet → valve, tree + book → leaf, snow + tennis → ball, candle + honeycomb → wax, beach + hourglass + desert → sand, and calm → serene against the cue “peaceful and untroubled” — are exactly the kind of words a round features. Around each featured word sit selected alternatives: other recognized words that also earn the maximum.
Estimates can still max out
For words outside the recognized set, the system estimates connection strengths and runs the 80/20 formula. In the current scoring version those estimates can reach the full 1,000 — an explicit change from the earlier 970-point ceiling that older archive dates still use.
This means the game does not force you to reverse-engineer one magic word. If your estimate lands well, an unexpected answer can match the featured one.
Close-meaning rounds are more curated
Round 5 does not lean on open estimates the way bridge rounds do. It is scored against a specific dictionary sense using reviewed alternatives — a checked set built around the cued meaning. The official example: for calm cued as “peaceful and untroubled”, serene preserves that sense. The guardrail is explicit too: known opposites receive at most 100 points.
Why near-misses pay less
A near-miss is a word adjacent to the accepted answer but not inside it — the right topic, the wrong sense, or a stretch that only one clue supports. Three mechanisms push these scores down:
- The geometric mean drags the score toward the weakest clue.
- In bridge rounds, vague words hit the 0.6 specificity adjustment.
- In close-meaning rounds, only the exact sense counts, and opposites cap at 100.
Practical takeaways
- If a recognized answer comes to mind, type it — it cannot be beaten.
- If you suspect an alternative exists, an unusual-but-strong answer may still max out through estimates under current rules.
- If your unusual answer scores below expectations, it is a near-miss rather than a broken game; the low-score guide helps you diagnose it.
- For version differences that affect all of this — especially the old 970 ceiling — see the rule-version page before comparing archive scores.