Play a word game vs a bot
Last updated: 2026-07-26
Challenge-a-bot in Hot & Cold is a single challenge round against a computer opponent that runs entirely on your phone. You both chase the same secret word, each guess is ranked by how close it is in meaning to the answer, and no connection is involved at any point, so it works on a plane or a subway as well as anywhere else.
Challenge-a-bot lives in the iOS & Android app, not on the web: the bot is generated and scored on your device, so the mode is hidden in the browser. Grab the app below and the button drops you straight into a bot round.
Get the app on the App Store or on Google Play.
How the bot plays
The bot plays the round roughly the way a person does: it tries a word, reads the heat, and steers its next guess toward warmer ground. You watch its progress alongside your own without ever seeing the word it typed, so nothing gets spoiled. There's no clock and no leaderboard. When one of you lands on rank #1 the round ends, and you get a breakdown of how you both did.
How the round works offline
Because the app bundles the whole word list, everything a round needs is already on the device. A secret is chosen locally, and every guess is scored against about 15,000 words ranked by closeness in meaning. Rank #1 is the secret, and lower numbers are hotter. Those ranks are precomputed from the same map of meaning every other mode uses, so the scoring is identical: the same guess always lands at the same rank. Most of the list sits at 🥶 freezing, then it climbs through cool and warm to 🌶️ hot near the top, and ranks 2–6 come back 🌋 blazing, just before 🎯 the secret at #1. A solved round is graded out of 1,000 points. Your opening 4 tries cost you nothing, after which a gentle penalty curve sets in, and you can switch on up to 3 hints if you'd like a nudge. The full rules live on how to play if you want the details.
When there's no signal
The endless word game also runs fully offline on mobile: unlimited rounds with a fresh secret each time, no bot required. When you do have signal and want real people instead, the word game with friends puts a whole room on the same secret, together or in your own time.