How to play Originle

Play in six steps

The target is the country represented through roots and culture, not necessarily where the guest lives today.

• Open originle.io for the latest published guest; you do not need to arrive exactly at reset.
• Watch the first clip. Listen for language and personal cultural clues rather than deciding from appearance.
• Search for a country in the game and submit when ready. You can solve without opening all eight clips.
• If uncertain, reveal another clue. Keep a short list of candidates and use independent clues to narrow it.
• You have three guesses. Each miss reduces a later correct-answer score; avoid using a guess merely to test an accent.
• After three misses, or giving up, the nearest submitted guess determines closeness points. Giving up without a guess scores zero.

• Open the official game

Base points before misses

For editions 3 onward, the eight-clue base table is:

• 1 clue: 10,000
• 2 clues: 9,750 (250 lower)
• 3 clues: 9,250 (500 lower)
• 4 clues: 8,500 (750 lower)
• 5 clues: 7,500 (1,000 lower)
• 6 clues: 6,250 (1,250 lower)
• 7 clues: 4,750 (1,500 lower)
• 8 clues: 3,000 (1,750 lower)

The order matters: base, misses, then rounding

Take the base for the number of clues open at the correct guess. Multiply it by 0.7 once per earlier miss, then round the final result once to the nearest 10. This is not repeated rounding after every action, and clue costs after a miss are reduced by the same multiplier.

For example, four clues and one earlier miss give 8,500 × 0.7 = 5,950. Eight clues and two earlier misses give 3,000 × 0.7 × 0.7 = 1,470. A correct first-clue answer with no miss scores 10,000.

Closeness if you do not solve

After three misses, or giving up, use the minimum distance among the submitted guesses. The formula is 1,000 × exp(−nearest_km / 1,500), rounded to the nearest 10. The game uses its country-distance table, not capital-to-capital distance.

At 0 km the closeness score is 1,000; at 1,500 km it is 370. No guesses means zero. For editions 3 onward, even the lowest correct solve, 1,470, beats the highest miss score. A 0 km wrong country remains a miss, and rounded table distances do not establish land borders.

Editions 1 and 2 retain their original point table

Aya and Emiliia use bases of 10,000, 9,000, 8,000, 7,000, 6,000, 5,000, 4,000 and 2,500, then subtract 500 per earlier miss. The last clue lowers the base from 4,000 to 2,500: a cost of 1,500, not 2,500.

These archived point rules do not mean the current game has one guess. The shared interface allows three. Some old clue-description strings still mention one guess; the shared rules and scoring implementation are the source for current behavior. Clue titles and outline positions also vary by edition.