How to play Close Hue

The basic idea

Close Hue gives you a color name — sometimes familiar (Goldenrod, Chartreuse), sometimes obscure (Coquelicot, Falu Red, Xanadu). You use the color picker to guess what color the name refers to. The closer your guess is to the actual color, the higher your score.

It's free, runs entirely in your browser, and doesn't require an account. Your stats and streaks are saved locally on your device.

Some people call it a color naming game; others a color matching game. Same idea either way: read the name, then dial in the color with the picker.

Steps

1. 1.

   Read the color name

   Each round opens with a color name like Coquelicot, Glaucous, or Hornet Sting. The screen shows the name; the actual color is hidden until you submit.

2. 2.

   Pick the color you think it is

   Use the color picker to dial in your guess. You can adjust hue, saturation, and brightness independently — see the HSB section below if those terms are new. There is no penalty for taking your time — only your final guess counts.

3. 3.

   Submit your guess

   Tap submit. The target color is revealed alongside your guess so you can see how close you came.

4. 4.

   See your score

   Each guess is scored 0–100 based on the perceptual distance between your guess and the target, computed with the CIEDE2000 ΔE formula. 100 is a perfect match; 0 means opposite ends of the color gamut.

5. 5.

   Repeat for 5 rounds

   A daily game has five rounds. Your scores are added up for a daily total out of 500. Streaks track consecutive days played.

6. 6.

   Share your result

   After all five rounds, share an emoji grid of your score bands — green for excellent, yellow for good, orange for off, black for way off — without spoiling the colors for friends.

HSB, not RGB

The picker has three sliders, and they aren't red/green/blue — they're HSB: hue, saturation, and brightness. It's the same model designers reach for when they're describing a color in plain language, which makes it a better fit for the way most color names work.

• H — Hue (0–360°). Where on the color wheel: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple. This is the "what color is it" axis.
• S — Saturation (0–100). How vivid the color is. 0 is grey, 100 is the most pure version of that hue. "Muted" sits low; "vivid" or "neon" sits high.
• B — Brightness (0–100). How light the color is. 0 is black; 100 is the brightest version of that hue. "Dark" sits low; "pale" or "bright" sits high.

So H121 S70 B85 reads as "green, fairly vivid, fairly bright" — a neon green. And H32 S39 B50 reads as "orange-hue, muted, mid-dark" — a brown.

Tips for higher scores

• Think hue first. Most color names map to a hue family first ("red"), a saturation level ("muted" vs "vivid"), and a brightness ("dark" vs "pale"). Get those three right and you'll usually land in the green band.
• Look up unfamiliar names. Daily mode rewards skill, not memorization, but in Unlimited mode looking up Coquelicot once teaches you it's a vivid corn-poppy red forever.
• Watch the picker preview. The picker updates live — you don't have to commit until the preview "feels" right for the name.

Game modes

• daily — five colors per day, same for every player worldwide. Score counts toward your streak.
• unlimited — play as many rounds as you want with random colors from the full pool. Doesn't affect your daily streak.
• multiplayer — share a room code with a friend. Both players get the same five colors and you compare scores at the end.

More detail

Curious about the scoring math? See how scoring works. Want to know where the color names come from? read the methodology.