How to play Originle
What is Originle?
Originle is a daily geography game built around real people. Each day a new guest tells their story in short videos: a few words in their language, something from home, the landscape, a tradition, how big their country feels. Your job is to work out which country they represent.
The twist is that the answer is about heritage. Guests may live anywhere in the world, so a guest who grew up in London can be representing Iraq. You start with 10,000 points; every clue you open and every wrong guess costs some of them.
The rules on one card
- Goal
- Name the country today's guest represents through their roots and culture, not necessarily where they live now.
- Your moves
- Watch the first video, open the next clue when you need it, lock in a guess, or give up. A globe lets you mark and shortlist countries.
- Feedback
- A wrong guess shows its distance from the answer, border to border. Your remaining points show what a right answer is still worth.
- End of the round
- The round ends on a correct guess, your third miss, or giving up. A new guest arrives at midnight Eastern.
Your first round, step by step
- Open originle.io and watch the guest's first video with the sound on. Captions are there if you need them.
- If one country already fits, type it in and lock the guess. If not, choose to reveal the next clue.
- Use the globe as a scratchpad: mark the countries you're weighing so you don't lose track.
- After a wrong guess, read the distance. Then decide between guessing again and opening another clue.
- The round ends on a right answer, a third miss or giving up. Your score and the guest's reveal video follow.
Originle scoring, exactly
What a right answer scores depends on how many clues are open and how many guesses you've already missed. Each miss keeps 70% of the points.
| Clues open | First guess | After 1 miss | After 2 misses |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 10,000 | 7,000 | 4,900 |
| 2 | 9,750 | 6,830 | 4,780 |
| 3 | 9,250 | 6,480 | 4,530 |
| 4 | 8,500 | 5,950 | 4,170 |
| 5 | 7,500 | 5,250 | 3,680 |
| 6 | 6,250 | 4,380 | 3,060 |
| 7 | 4,750 | 3,330 | 2,330 |
| 8 (outline) | 3,000 | 2,100 | 1,470 |
If all three guesses miss
You score for your closest guess: 1,000 × e−km/1,500, rounded to tens. Any right answer, even on the last clue after two misses (1,470), beats the best possible miss.
| Closest guess | Points |
|---|---|
| 0 km (shares a border) | 1,000 |
| 100 km | 940 |
| 250 km | 850 |
| 500 km | 720 |
| 1,000 km | 510 |
| 1,500 km | 370 |
| 2,500 km | 190 |
| 4,000 km | 70 |
Puzzles #1 (Aya) and #2 (Mila) keep the rules they were first played under: 1,000 points per clue, 2,500 for the last, and 500 per miss. Figures checked against the game on October 15, 2026.
Rules people overlook
- Clues get dearer as you go: the second costs 250 points, the last one 1,750. The early ones are the cheap ones.
- A wrong guess costs 30% of whatever a right answer was worth at that point, so a miss on clue 1 costs 3,000, more than the next four clues together.
- Missing all three guesses, or giving up, still scores up to 1,000 for your closest guess.
- Neighbours that share a border with the answer count as 0 km away for that close-miss score.
- The game can refuse a guess for a particular guest, such as the passport country of someone representing their family's homeland.
- Puzzles #1 and #2 keep the original rules when you replay them in the archive.
Tips that save points
Listen to the first video twice
It's free. Names, accents and background details are all evidence, and a right answer now is worth 10,000.
Think region before country
A dish or a festival usually belongs to several neighbours. Pin down the region, then look for the clue that splits it.
Don't trust the accent
Many guests grew up abroad. The answer is the country they represent, so weigh culture and language over how they sound in English.
Buy a clue instead of a coin flip
Torn between two countries? The next clue costs at most 1,750; a wrong guess costs 30% of everything.
Read the distance
Under 500 km means you're next door: stay in the region. Thousands of kilometres means a different part of the world.
Save a guess for the outline
The last clue shows the country's shape. On hard days, keep one guess in hand for it.
Want to practise on a real guest? The hints for today open one step at a time.
Is Originle for you?
You'll like it if
- you enjoy human stories as much as maps
- you like a daily puzzle with a real scoring decision in it
- you know your cuisines, languages and festivals
Look elsewhere if
- you want a pure map or flag quiz
- you can't play with sound or video
- you'd rather guess freely without penalties
Originle compared with similar games
| Game | You find | You work from | Tries | New puzzle |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Originle | The country a real person represents | Eight short videos of the guest | 3 guesses | Midnight Eastern |
| Worldle | A country | Its silhouette, then distance and direction | 6 guesses | Daily |
| Globle | A country | A globe that colours your guesses by closeness | Unlimited | Daily |
| GeoGuessr | A spot on the map | Street View imagery | One pin per round | Daily challenge |