Nounable #871 · May 21, 2026
The answer
Pinocchio
- Category
- Fictional
- Par
- 30 guesses
Pinocchio was the secret proper noun for this puzzle: an entry from Nounable's Fictional category, one of the roughly 35,000 well-known entities the game draws from.
How this puzzle worked
On May 21, 2026, every guess players made was ranked by semantic similarity to Pinocchio: 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 Fictional cluster.
Par for this puzzle was 30, golf-style: finishing in 30 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.