Hunch

Hunch is a five-letter word game that refuses to color letters. Each attempt placed on the grid remains in midnight blue from the first to the last character; the verdict appears beside it in the form of two numbered tiles at the end of the row, one green and one amber. All the thinking therefore consists of cross-referencing numbers instead of reading colored squares.

1. Open hunch.game. The page starts on the tutorial: the word TUTORIAL at the top, accompanied by a dropdown menu of four entries marked with stars, from ★☆☆ to ★★★.
2. Observe the grid. Each row is numbered on the left, contains a five-letter word, then ends with two extra tiles, one green and one amber, each bearing a number.
3. Note what does not happen: no letter changes color. The letter tiles all share exactly the same blue, and only the counting tiles at the end of each row are green or amber.
4. Compose your word on the QWERTY keyboard shown at the bottom of the screen.
5. The current row waits for you with its first cell outlined, a gray slot and a dotted slot where the two numbers will appear.
6. The tutorial plays like a video: at the bottom of the screen, a play button flanked by two skip buttons, a 2x button on the left to speed up, and a step counter at the bottom right.
7. The tutorial panel offers three numbered doors, “Quick tour (I promise)”, “Explain the numbers” and “Got it. Let me try.”, plus a “Keep watching” link to let the demonstration run.

For the constraint, frankly uncomfortable at first: deprived of letter-by-letter color coding, you can no longer play by visual instinct; you must cross-check counts line by line and deduce. It’s a word game that leans toward logical reasoning. The care given to the welcome is also worth the detour: the demonstration speeds up, rewinds and skips, with an entry reserved for the single question that matters when you arrive. What do these two numbers correspond to.

Two numbers, and nothing else. At the end of each played row, a green tile and an amber tile display a count, and the letters all remain the same blue, whether they’re well seen or completely off. In the four rows of the demonstration, the green counter rises as the guesses narrow while the amber counter eventually falls to zero. The tutorial reserves an entire entry for what each measures, “Explain the numbers.” The keyboard keys, for their part, do not carry any markings either.

Classic

A single word to find for the day.

Cascade

A day made of several words instead of one.

Doubles

A third named mode, listed alongside Classic and Cascade.

Practice

A practice mode, tracked with its own milestones alongside Classic and Cascade.

• The counter at the bottom right follows the tutorial steps, not your attempts. Do not read it as a number of moves you have left.
• If only the two numbers intrigue you, don’t endure the full tour: the panel offers a dedicated entry, “Explain the numbers”, and a direct exit, “Got it. Let me try.”
• The 2x button at the bottom left speeds up the demonstration, and the two skip buttons flanking playback let you go back to the step you missed. A tutorial you can rewind is rare enough to take advantage of.
• Because the keyboard leaves no trace of letters already eliminated, the register of dead letters must be kept in your head or on paper. It’s the direct counterpart of the no-colors design.
• The dropdown menu next to TUTORIAL offers four entries graded by stars: start with the one-star entry before moving up.