Why animals?

Kids know more animal names than you’d think. Picture books, zoo trips and nature shows fill their heads with them, and plenty of kids who would stall on a word like PLAIN or TRUST can spell TIGER, PANDA and KOALA. When we made a five-letter guessing game, animals were the obvious answers.

There are 81 critters in the pool, from SHEEP and PANDA to a few surprises, like KRILL and TAPIR. Find one and a card shows a short fact about it. After three guesses a hint tells you what kind of animal it is. Every clue also has its own badge, a sunflower or a water drop, so the game reads clearly for anyone who has trouble telling colors apart.

A bit of real word-guessing history

Guessing a hidden word from clues is much older than the internet. In 1955 Morton M. Rosenfeld invented Jotto, a pencil-and-paper game for two. Each player picks a secret five-letter word. When you guess the other player’s word, they tell you how many letters the two words share, but not where those letters sit. Rosenfeld’s New York company sold it, and the rights later passed to Selchow and Righter.

In 1970 Mordecai Meirowitz, an Israeli postmaster and telecommunications expert, invented Mastermind. It swapped letters for colored pegs and added the clue Jotto left out. A colored key peg means a right color in the right place. A white key peg means a right color in the wrong place. The British firm Invicta Plastics bought the rights.

Letters and places came together on TV. The American game show Lingo premiered in 1987. Teams got the first letter of a five-letter word and had five turns to find it, and each letter lit up to show if it was in the right place or in the word but somewhere else. In October 2021 a software engineer named Josh Wardle released Wordle, a daily word game he first made for his partner. The New York Times bought it in January 2022. Critter Guess borrows that idea, with animals and garden badges.

What the badges mean

• 🌻 Sunflower on an orange pebble: right letter, right spot.
• 💧 Water drop with a blue dashed ring: the letter is in the animal’s name, but in a different spot.
• Faded stone: that letter isn’t in the name at all.

How to play

• Type a five-letter word with the pebble keys or your own keyboard, then press Guess or Enter.
• The keys get the same badges as your letters, so you can see which are left.
• You have six tries. After three, a hint tells you if it’s a mammal, bird, reptile, fish or something else.
• Guesses must be real words. Turn on Kid mode and any five letters count.
• Today’s critter is the same for everyone and changes at midnight, Singapore time. You get one go a day. Practice is unlimited.
• Share copies your badges without the letters, so nobody gets the answer spoiled.
• Sound is on to start. Tap 🔊 to mute, or 🎵 for music.
• Earn 3 stickers in this game for your QuickBOP sticker book.

Tips

Open with common letters. A first guess like STARE or TRAIN tests five common letters at once. Even all stones tell you a lot.

Switch to animals early. By the second or third guess, stop trying random words and list animals that fit your badges. The answer is always a critter.

Watch for double letters. SHEEP, LLAMA, GOOSE, HIPPO and PUPPY all repeat a letter. A sunflower on one L doesn’t rule out a second one.

Use the hint. Once you know it’s a bird or a fish, the list of possible animals gets much shorter.

Your turn

Today’s critter is hiding at the top of the page. Six tries, one animal and a fun fact to keep. Go and play.