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Lizely

Synonym Match

Match five same-sense, same-part-of-speech word pairs verified against WordNet and Cambridge, with accessible touch and keyboard play.

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How to use

  1. 1.Read the prompt word, its part of speech, and the short sense note so you match the intended meaning rather than a broad association.
  2. 2.Tap one of four candidate words, or move the keyboard cursor with the arrow keys and press Enter to submit the highlighted choice.
  3. 3.Match all five fixed rounds for exactly 200 points each; one distinct error remains playable, while a second requires Restart.

About Synonym Match

Synonym Match is a five-round English word game about precise lexical equivalence. Each round shows one prompt word, its part of speech, and a short sense note. Four candidate words appear below it. Choose the candidate that can express the same disclosed meaning in the same grammatical role. A correct match awards 200 points, so five correct rounds produce exactly 1,000.

Synonym questions become unreliable when a game treats every related word as interchangeable. A word about speed is not automatically synonymous with every word about motion. A word associated with service is not automatically equivalent to every action performed near another person. This game therefore pins each match to a specific adjective or verb sense and rejects candidates that are merely topical, opposite, or grammatically mismatched.

Princeton WordNet 3.1 is the primary lexical reference. Its dictionary data groups words into synsets representing a shared lexical concept and records part of speech. For every winning match in this game, the prompt and selected answer occur in the same relevant adjective or verb synset. This is stronger evidence than relying on a generated similarity score or an uncited list assembled from intuition.

The Cambridge Thesaurus provides an independent cross-check. Each of the five prompt entries was fetched successfully during implementation, and the matching candidate was found in its page content. The comparison is performed for the intended sense shown in the interface. This matters for polysemous words, because the same spelling can carry different meanings in different contexts.

The five rounds are fixed rather than adaptive. Early and later rounds vary in word length, grammatical category, and how plausible the distractors may look, but the game does not claim to infer a player's vocabulary level or change difficulty from performance. A fixed fixture keeps the source evidence, score path, regression tests, and production behavior reproducible.

Every round contains four unique candidate strings and exactly one verified answer. Distractors are ordinary English adjectives or verbs selected to be clearly non-equivalent in the disclosed sense. Some share a part of speech with the prompt, ensuring that players still need semantic judgment. Others demonstrate boundaries such as opposition or unrelated meaning. The game never accepts a broad association as a correct match.

The interface does not reveal which candidate is correct before selection. All four buttons use the same structure, and correctness is not placed in visible text, screen-reader-only text, aria labels, data attributes, CSS class names, or ordering metadata. The highlighted state represents only the player's keyboard cursor. Candidate order is fixed and varied between rounds, so a repeated position pattern does not disclose the answer.

Pointer and touch play are direct: tap a candidate to submit it. Every candidate is a native button at least 44 pixels high, uses wrapping text, and sits in a one-column mobile grid that expands to two columns on wider screens. The game container uses bounded width, minimum-width protection, and overflow containment so long words cannot force horizontal page scrolling.

Keyboard play covers the full task. Left or Up moves to the previous candidate, while Right or Down moves to the next. Selection wraps at either end. Press Enter to submit the highlighted candidate. The shared GameShell provides Restart and describes the controls alongside the score. Its double-Escape boss key switches to the spreadsheet-style cover and back without altering the round.

Wrong choices use an exact deterministic signature made from the round and candidate index. Selecting the same wrong candidate again does not consume another mistake. The first distinct wrong choice leaves the round available so the player can reconsider. A second different wrong choice deadlocks the run until Restart. This rule avoids penalizing an accidental duplicate event while keeping guessing finite.

Invalid indices, fractional indices, unknown cursor directions, and all input after completion or deadlock are atomic no-ops. They do not change the cursor, score, error history, or feedback. A correct selection advances immediately to the next fixed round with its first candidate highlighted. Completion freezes later input at exactly 1,000 points. Restart restores round one, candidate one, zero score, and no wrong signatures.

The game runs entirely in the browser. It sends no selected words to a server, requires no account, calls no paid API, and adds no package dependency. Best score is stored locally when browser storage is available. Synonym Match is recreational vocabulary practice; it is not an adaptive assessment, language certification, reading-level diagnosis, or measure of intelligence.

Focused tests keep the reference and product layers separate. An independent literal fixture contains externally checked true pairs plus antonym and unrelated-word boundaries. Production rounds are compared with those expected words, parts of speech, and senses. Additional tests cover four unique candidates per round, exact 200-point progression, duplicate-error suppression, two-error deadlock, cursor wrapping, invalid commands, terminal freeze, and Restart. The cited sources support the lexical relationships only; candidate order, scoring, interface, and mistake policy are Lizely product decisions.

Methodology & sources

Use five fixed prompt, part-of-speech, sense, four-candidate, and correct-index fixtures. Require every winning pair to occur in the same relevant WordNet 3.1 adjective or verb synset and independently appear in the corresponding Cambridge Thesaurus entry. Keep an independent test fixture with nine external golden cases, including five true pairs and four antonym or unrelated boundaries. Validate candidate uniqueness, index bounds, exact 200-point transitions to 1,000, cursor wrapping, runtime direction validation, invalid-index atomicity, repeated-error deduplication, second-distinct-error deadlock, terminal freeze, and Restart. Do not expose correctness metadata through rendered candidate attributes.

Frequently asked questions

How does Synonym Match decide that two words match?
Each winning pair is checked in the same part of speech and disclosed sense against Princeton WordNet 3.1, then independently cross-checked in the Cambridge Thesaurus.
Does the game adapt its difficulty to my performance?
No. The five rounds and four choices per round are fixed and reproducible. Their variety progresses, but the game does not profile or adapt to a player.
Can related words count even if they are not true synonyms?
No. A topical relationship is not enough. The selected candidate must share the displayed meaning and part of speech with the prompt word.

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