Why is it hard?

Say a word that has nothing to do with the last word.

That sounds easy.

It isn’t.

If you hear beach, your brain quickly thinks of things like sand, sea and sun.

But in RANDOM, those are bad answers.

You need to jump somewhere else.

beach → sandToo close.

beach → algebraMuch better.

How the score works

The less your word has to do with the word before it, the more points you get.

Answer quickly and you can get a few extra points too.

At the end, you also get a creative spread score out of 100.

This checks how different your own words are from each other.

If all your words are similar, your score will be lower.

If they are very different, your score will be higher.

For example:

apple, banana, orange, pearNot much spread.

volcano, trumpet, dentist, submarineLots of spread.

Sometimes your answer also has to start with a certain letter.

So instead of thinking of any unrelated word, you might have to think of an unrelated word beginning with F.

That makes it harder.

No.

RANDOM is a game.

Your score does not tell you how clever or creative you are.

It simply measures how far apart the words are.

The fun is trying to find the word your brain wasn’t expecting.

RANDOM is based on real ideas studied by psychologists.

You can read more about:

Unrelated words and creative thinking The idea that inspired the game.
The research paper The original study.
Word association and verbal fluency Why one word makes your brain think of another.

Word definitions come from WordNet, Princeton University.

Questions, ideas or press enquiries: Bookmintsupport@gmail.com