How False Root works
Every word comes with four origin stories. One is true. Three are lies. A tap strikes a story out as a lie: each lie you strike is a point, all three is a clean sweep, and touching the true one ends the round. Already sure which is true? Name it, with the button under the stories: right is a clean sweep, wrong ends the round on what you have struck. On a keyboard, 1–4 strike a story, T then a number names the truth, and S shares your result.
Your word today
You meet the words in order from №1, at your own pace. The homepage opens the first word you have not played and keeps it there all day, and a missed week costs you nothing: the next word is still waiting. Every word gives you one try a day. A word you have just seen the answer to would only test your memory, so it comes back tomorrow with its stories in a different order. Your best result is the one that’s kept.
How a lie is built
Every lie copies one of the ways false origins get made, and each kind is shown here on a word from outside the game: the tale first, then the fact that breaks it.
Just-so story. A vivid tale invented to explain a word. N, E, W and S are the initials of the four points of the compass, so a tale reads news as an acronym for the reports that come in from every direction. In fact news is the plural of new: Middle English wrote the plural newes or newys, new things.
Fake eponym. A person or place, real or invented, credited with a word that never came from them. The physician Paracelsus came from the Bombast von Hohenheim family, so a tale derives bombast, inflated talk, from his name. In fact bombast first meant cotton padding, from French bombace, cotton.
False classical root. Real Latin or Greek, but the wrong word. Greek polis means city, so a tale says polite first meant the manners of a city dweller. In fact polite is Latin politus, polished, from polire, to polish.
Wrong borrowing route. A word sent through a language it never passed through. An emoji often shows a feeling, so a tale runs emoji back through English emotion to French and Latin. In fact emoji is Japanese, e, picture, and moji, character, and looks like emotion by chance.
Folk etymology re-cuts a word into familiar English pieces, as when asparagus became sparrowgrass. A form marked with an asterisk is found in no record: scholars rebuilt it from the words that came after it.
How the words are made
I build False Root on my own. I choose the words, set the rules that every draft and every check must meet, and fix any mistake that gets through. The drafts are written with a language model, and two checks test every word against its sources before it goes live.
The family tree. A lie built on a true root is half an answer, and the root that feels right to a writer is often the real one. So a script reads Wiktionary’s account of the word and of each form it came from, up to five steps back, checks the route into English, the true origin’s form and its dates, then tests every lie against that tree. A lie whose root is in the tree, in the same language, fails. One whose root only resembles something there, appears there in another language, or names no form at all goes to the second check. A linter also warns when the true story is the odd one out on length, dates, names or punctuation.
A reader trying to break it. A second model, with no part in the drafting, tries to prove the word wrong. It finds a source for every sentence that states a fact, checks every true origin against Wiktionary and at least one other reference, and looks for anyone who claims a lie is the true origin. Then it reads the four stories as a stranger would, for one that gives itself away by its length, its tone or a detail only it has. A word goes live only when both checks pass, and one whose facts fail three times is dropped.
What the checks cannot promise. Nothing here can promise more than the references do. The checks read the same references a person would, so where those are wrong, or all repeat one popular mistake, the checks are wrong with them. Where scholars dispute an origin, the reveal marks it disputed and says which part is in doubt.
Etymology is a field of live argument. A reveal summarises scholarship and does not settle it, so treat one as a place to start, not something to cite. Every reveal links Wiktionary and the Online Etymology Dictionary and carries a Report a problem link, and corrections@falseroot.com reaches me directly.
Your streak
Each day you finish a word you have not already mastered adds a day to your streak, from any page. Every seven days banks a freeze, up to two, and one freeze quietly covers a missed day. Freezes are earned, never sold. A word you swept is mastered; one that got past you waits under To revisit on the Words page, which also keeps your week and your record.
Your data
Signing in is optional: everything works without it and is saved in this browser. Sign in and your progress follows you to any device. Once enough people have met a word, its reveal says how they read it, from real answers only. No invented numbers, ever, and no ads, no third-party tracking, nothing sold. The privacy page lists exactly what is recorded.