Frequently asked questions
Quick answers about how Close Hue works, the scoring, and your data.
What is Close Hue?
Close Hue is a daily browser game where you guess colors from their names. Each day there are five colors. You see the name (like 'Coquelicot' or 'Glaucous'), pick what color you think it is, and get scored on how close you came. The game is free and doesn't require an account.
Is Close Hue free?
Yes. Close Hue is free to play with no account required. The site may show ads to cover hosting, but core gameplay is and will remain free.
Do I need to sign up or create an account?
No. Close Hue runs entirely in your browser. Your stats, streaks, and theme preference are saved to your device's local storage and never leave your device unless you explicitly share a result.
When does the daily puzzle reset?
midnight Eastern Time (US East Coast, with DST). Every player worldwide gets the same five colors for the same ET calendar date — so a player in Tokyo and a player in New York compare scores on the same puzzle.
How is the score calculated?
Each guess is scored 0 to 100 using the CIEDE2000 delta-E formula, a perceptual color difference metric standardized by the International Commission on Illumination. Delta-E is mapped to a 0 to 100 score via exponential decay: identical colors score 100, delta-E around 10 scores about 70, and opposite ends of the gamut score 0.
How many colors are in Close Hue?
The pool has 6,177 unique color names, merged from four sources: a hand-curated list (156 names), Wikipedia's 'List of colors' (753 names after filtering), the meodai/color-names goodName subset (4,681 names), and the xkcd color survey (587 names after filtering crude entries).
What does each score band mean?
Scores are grouped into four bands for the share grid and stats. Green (90 to 100) is excellent — a trained eye couldn't tell the difference. Yellow (70 to 89) is a good guess in the right hue family. Orange (40 to 69) is in the neighborhood but visibly off. Black (0 to 39) is a wildly different color.
Is there a hard mode?
Daily mode draws from the entire 6,177-name pool, including obscure historical and crowdsourced names — that's effectively the hard mode. Unlimited mode uses the same pool. Filtering options for an 'easy mode' (only common names) may be added in the future.
Can I play with friends?
Yes. Multiplayer mode generates a six-character room code that you share with a friend. Everyone in the room gets the same five colors (deterministically seeded from the room code), and you can compare scores after all rounds are played.
Can I share my result without spoiling the colors?
Yes. The share button copies an emoji grid of your score bands plus your total score. The actual colors and color names aren't included, so you can post your result on any platform without spoiling the day's puzzle.
Does Close Hue work on mobile?
Yes. Close Hue is a responsive web app — the color picker, game flow, and stats all work on phones, tablets, and desktops. There's no native app to install.
What if I'm colorblind?
Close Hue is a color-perception game, so colorblindness will affect scoring on hue-discrimination puzzles. The game still works — you can play casually for fun — but competitive play assumes typical trichromatic vision. Accessibility modes are under consideration for the future.
Where do the color names come from?
Color names are merged from four sources: a hand-curated original list, Wikipedia's "List of colors" (CC BY-SA 4.0), the meodai/color-names repository (MIT), and the xkcd color survey (CC0). Full source attribution and methodology is documented at /colors.
Why does my guess sometimes score low even when it looks close?
Close Hue uses CIEDE2000 delta-E, a perceptual color difference formula that accounts for the human eye's varying sensitivity to different hues. Your guess might look 'close enough' on your monitor but be a meaningful perceptual distance from the target — for example, a slightly desaturated guess can score lower than expected because saturation is weighted heavily in CIE Lab space.
Still curious?
Read more about how scoring works, how to play, or the color name methodology.