← All past answers

Nounable #867 · May 17, 2026

The answer

Germany

Category
Places
Par
27 guesses

Central European federal parliamentary republic

How this puzzle worked

On May 17, 2026, every guess players made was ranked by semantic similarity to Germany: the game compares text embeddings of the guess and the answer and counts how many of its ~35,000 known entities sit closer. A rank in the green band (1–300) meant a guess from the same neighborhood of meaning (think same category, field, or franchise), while ranks past 5,000 signaled a completely different part of the map. Solvers typically worked their way in by probing broad categories first, then following the warm colors toward the Places cluster.

Par for this puzzle was 27, golf-style: finishing in 27 guesses or fewer (after adding any hint penalties of +2, +4, +6…) counts as beating the course. New to the game? Read the full how-to-play guide or try today's puzzle.