Guess today's mystery language.
A mystery language is hiding somewhere on the family tree of the world's languages. You have 15 attempts on Easy, 30 on Medium and 50 on Hard to find it. Any of the 8,618 languages in Glottolog is a valid guess.
Every guess tells you the most recent common ancestor it shares with the answer — the deepest branch the two have in common — and how warm that makes it:
Warmth is measured against the answer's own lineage, because language families are not nested to a fixed depth: Indo-European runs 12 branches deep in places, Koreanic only 2. The named ancestor is the precise signal; the colour is the summary.
You also get a compass bearing and distance to the answer, free with every guess.
Hints — where it's spoken, its word order, its word for “water” — are on demand, and each one costs an attempt, exactly as if you had guessed. You cannot spend your last attempt on a hint, and once the puzzle is over the rest are revealed for free.
Reveal a branch uncovers the next level of the answer's lineage on the tree — its family first, if you have not found that yet, then one branch deeper each time. It never uncovers the language itself, and it is the expensive move: it costs half your remaining attempts, rounded down, at least one — so the earlier you buy, the more it takes: half of fifteen is seven, half of three is one.
Daily is the same puzzle for everyone, changing at midnight UTC; the current day and two previous days are available at three difficulties.
