Nounable #985 · September 12, 2026

How this puzzle worked

On September 12, 2026, every guess players made was ranked by semantic similarity to New York: 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 Literature cluster.

Par for this puzzle was 26, golf-style: finishing in 26 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.