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Phew. And you thought Wordle was hard? While Contexto can be a challenging daily word game, the challenge is what makes victory so rewarding. If you’re having trouble correctly identifying the secret word each day, don’t worry. You’re not alone. Devising the most effective Contexto strategies (and relying less on blind luck) can help victory come sooner. Lean into these tips for Contexto to take some of the random guesswork out of the equation.
What Are the Best Contexto Starting Words?
Before you can decide on the best Contexto guesses to start each game, it helps to understand how the Contexto game works in the first place. You get a ranking based on how contextually relevant your guess is to the word you’re trying to find (which has a ranking of 1). It’s not about similar spelling or finding a synonym; rather, it’s about the relative likelihood of “co-occurrence” in a body of text. This relates to some word association games, for example.
Given that, choosing the best Contexto starting word is not the same as deciding on the best Wordle starting words. Contexto strategies can vary, of course, but here are two sound approaches that should help point you in the right direction in as few guesses as possible.
Good Contexto Words Cover Common Word Categories
With rare exception, Contexto answers are almost always common nouns. Proper nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, interjections and other parts of speech are very unlikely. Contexto words like “beautiful” (October 10, 2022) almost never happen. Instead, you get answers like teacher, apartment, imagination and headphone.
To help narrow down the list of possibilities, some of the best starting words for Contexto are literally:
Person
Place
Thing
Idea
Concept
These common categories of common nouns probably won’t ever be actual answers. But, if you see that “person” is much further up the list than “place” or “thing,” you will have gained a valuable piece of information. Going a bit further, other good Contexto guesses early on in the game might include:
Food
Occupation
Animal
Event
Examples: The Best Contexto Guesses in Context
With the first Contexto game strategy above, it was about better identifying the category of word you’re trying to find. Another approach that you can use in tandem is to identify the context of the Contexto word. Examples of these types of Contexto guesses may include:
City
Nature
Home
Work
Technology
Once you know the category and context, a sound Contexto strategy would go one step further, trying specific examples that align with the information you’ve already gained.
If you know it’s a person at home, you might guess “baby” or “sister.”
If you know it’s a place in the city, you might try “street” or “library.”
If you know it’s a thing related to food, you might guess “plate” or “potato.”
If you know it’s some sort of idea, you could try “imagination” or “justice.”
These are all examples of past Contexto answers. One of the most valuable Contexto tips is to learn from experience! If words like these were answers in the past, similar words could be answers in a future puzzle.
Reference a Thesaurus for Good Contexto Words
Understanding how to decide on the best Contexto strategies also means understanding how the online word game works. It’s true that the score you receive for each of your Contexto guesses is not about similar in meaning it is to the word you’re trying to find. You might then think a thesaurus won’t be too helpful. Except, it really can.
When you search for a word in the thesaurus on YourDictionary, you get a list of synonyms, as you’d expect. If you continue scrolling, though, you may also find a list of related words too. For example, synonyms for “goat” include “kid” and “billy.” But, related words include calf, lamb, chicken and ewe.
Even if the related words themselves aren’t the actual answer, they’re valuable Contexto guesses in that they could provide a different kind of context for the answer. Or, they might get you to think about the daily puzzle from a slightly different angle.
Use a Random Word Generator
When all else fails, sometimes even the best Contexto strategies can come up short. Or, perhaps the best Contexto tips come down to lighting up a blind spot. All it takes is a spark of inspiration, which is why our random word generator can be so useful.
If you find yourself in a bit of a creative rut, our random word generator might help spark some ideas you may not have otherwise considered. They’re not all going to be good Contexto words. But, considering that you can generate a list of up to 50 random words and you can refresh the list almost instantly, there will never be a shortage of possible ideas to pursue.
More Key Contexto Tips and Hints
As you come back to the word-guessing game each day, keep these helpful hints and tips for Contexto in mind.
Different forms of words can be different guesses. “Mailing” and “mail” are not the same Contexto words and will get different scores. Similarly, “auto,” “mobile” and “automobile” are three separate Contexto guesses.
The difference between singular and plural nouns usually doesn’t matter. The Contexto game will automatically change “birds” to “bird” when you enter it as your guess.
Just because the answer is a common noun doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a physical thing you can touch. They can be abstract nouns too. Past Contexto answers have included everything from “dream” to “north.” Even “idea” and “luck” have been Contexto words.
The Most Effective Contexto Game Strategy
It will come as no surprise to anyone that the best way to get better at a game is to keep playing. But, you need to approach these games with the right tips and strategies in mind. So, just as you may have taken our helpful Wordle tips and tricks to heart, take the time to really absorb the Contexto game strategy discussed here. Learn from past experience and make those connections.
Michael Kwan is a professional writer and editor with over 16 years of experience. Fueled by caffeine and WiFi, he's no stranger to word games and dad jokes.
