> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.livehub.gg/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# Chatexto
> Guess the secret word by semantic closeness
**Category:** Word · **Players:** free-for-all (no elimination) · **Status:** Stable
The host picks a secret word. Chat guesses words, and each guess is scored by
how **semantically close** it is to the secret — rank 1 is the word itself,
higher ranks are further away. The first person to land rank 1 wins.
## Gameplay
Type a single word (letters only, at least two characters). Each new word
is placed on a closeness ladder by its rank; the closer it is, the hotter
it glows.
A low rank (e.g. #3) means you're very close; a high rank (e.g. #1340) is
cold. Use everyone's guesses to triangulate toward the secret.
The first person to type the exact secret word (rank 1) wins and ends the
round. The host can also reveal early to settle on points.
Each unique word is scored once — the first person to play it claims it, and
inflections (plurals, tenses) resolve to their base word. Late joiners are
welcome any time; their first guess opts them in.
## How closeness works
Chatexto ranks every word in its dictionary by how close it is *in meaning* to
the secret word, then tells you where your guess landed. Rank 1 is the secret
itself; rank 500 is the 500th-closest word.
* **Meaning, not spelling.** Words are compared using *word embeddings* — each
word is a point in a high-dimensional “meaning space” learned from how words
are used together. “King” sits near “queen” and “throne,” far from “banana.”
So `sunrise` scores well for a secret of `dawn` even though they share no
letters.
* **Your rank is a position.** The game sorts the entire dictionary by
closeness to the secret and reads off where your word falls. A low rank means
you're closing in; a high rank means you're cold.
* **Heat.** The board groups guesses into close / mid / far bands so the room
can see how warm the field is at a glance. Milestone ranks are worth chasing:
the top 100, the top 10, the top 3, and the solve at rank 1.
* **Word forms don't matter.** Plurals and tenses fold to their base word
(`movies` → `movie`, `tried` → `try`, `racing` → `race`), so you're never
penalized for how you typed it.
* **One claim per word.** The first person to play a word claims its rank;
repeats — or a different form of the same word — don't score again. Reading
the top guess off the screen and retyping it won't put you on the board.
* **Off-dictionary guesses.** A word the game doesn't know simply doesn't rank
(it shows as “not a word”). The host's secret is checked when the round is
created, so it's always a word the game can rank.
Under the hood, each word is a 300-dimension vector, and closeness is cosine
similarity after an *All-but-the-Top* correction (Mu & Viswanath, 2018) that
strips the few dominant directions shared by every word — so ranks reflect
real differences in meaning rather than how common a word is.
## Configuration
| Option | Values | Default |
| --------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------- |
| **Theme** | a curated word category, or **Custom** (host supplies the word) | Random theme |
| **Secret word** | any in-vocabulary English word — overrides the theme | From the theme |
| **Winner mode** | `most_points`, `final_guess` | `most_points` |
| **Reveal gift** | a TikTok gift that unlocks letters | Galaxy · clear to disable |
**Theme.** Chatexto draws the secret from a curated word category, so guesses
stay on-topic. Leave it on **Random** to let the game pick a theme (and word)
for you, or choose **Custom** and set your own word below.
**Secret word.** Optional — type any in-vocabulary English word to override the
theme and play that exact word. It's checked when the round is created; an
unknown word is rejected so you can pick another. Leave it blank to use the
theme.
**Winner mode.** Decides how a round is scored and who's crowned:
* **most\_points** (default) — every accepted guess scores by rank tier (see
Scoring below). A rank-1 guess still ends the round and banks 100
for the solver, but the highest total takes the crown, so a prolific guesser
can edge out the solver. The host can also **reveal early** to settle on
points before anyone solves it.
* **final\_guess** — the first person to type the exact word wins outright and
the round ends immediately.
**Reveal gift.** An optional, cooperative hint gift — prefilled with **Galaxy**,
or clear it to turn hints off. When set, sends of that gift uncover letters for
the whole room; see [Gifts](#gifts) for the amounts and caps.
## Layout
1. **Marquee** — game title and how-to hint.
2. **Heat tiles** — counts of close / mid / far guesses so far.
3. **Gift strip** — which gift reveals letters and by how much (when configured).
4. **Revealed letters** — letters unlocked by gifts, listed without positions.
5. **Closest-guess hero** — the current best guess, with its rank and heat bar.
6. **Closest-guess ladder** — recent guesses sorted by rank, colored by heat.
7. **Recent attempts** — every guess in arrival order, including duplicates and non-words.
8. **Leaderboard** — top players by points (or best rank in final-guess mode).
The game moves through **Lobby → Loading → Playing → Finished**.
## Gifts
Chatexto's gift is a **cooperative hint** — it helps the whole room and can
never hand anyone the win. It's set by the **Reveal gift** option (Galaxy by
default; clear it to turn hints off).
* **Each send reveals about 10% of the letters** (always at least one), at
**random positions** — so a hint suggests the word's shape without spelling
it out from the front.
* **Every send is equal.** One send reveals the same \~10% no matter which gift
you pick or how many diamonds it's worth. Progress comes from how *often* the
gift is sent, not how expensive it is — there's no paying for the answer.
* **Reveals stop at 70%.** At least \~30% of the letters can never be bought and
must be guessed. Once the cap is reached, further sends do nothing and the
board shows “hints exhausted,” so a round always ends on a guess.
* **Spaces, hyphens, and punctuation** are shown from the start and don't count
toward the cap.
Because reveals are flat-rate and capped, gifts move the whole room toward the
answer together without letting one gifter buy the solve.
## Scoring
In **most\_points** mode, each accepted guess scores by rank:
| Rank | Points |
| --------- | ------ |
| 1 | 100 |
| 2–10 | 30 |
| 11–50 | 15 |
| 51–200 | 8 |
| 201–1000 | 3 |
| 1001–5000 | 1 |
| 5000+ | 0 |
* A rank-1 guess ends the round in either mode. In most\_points, the solver
banks 100 first, then the highest total is crowned — usually the solver, but
a prolific guesser can edge ahead.
* Tiebreaks: points, then best rank, then join order.
* Wins are tracked per streamer.