Words and language guide
Updated
Word prompts are unusual because the answer is about the word itself: a word that starts with a letter, an interjection, a palindrome, a language, a phobia. They punish sloppy reading and reward pattern thinking.
Letter rules: search by sound, not meaning
For “starts with M” or “ends in -ia” prompts, don’t search the whole category and filter. Generate from the letters: Ma-, Me-, Mi-, Mo-, Mu-. For US states starting with M, that gives Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri and Montana. Montana and Maine tend to be less crowded than Michigan.
Word classes
Grammar prompts like “name an interjection” or “name a conjunction” sound academic, but you use these words every day. Picture a conversation, a comic strip or a sports commentary: alas, phew, yikes, bravo, hmm, oops, gosh. Older and regional interjections are the rare tier: egad, zounds, strewth, begorrah. See the full list on Name an interjection.
Languages
For “name a language spoken in India”, Hindi and English are crowded. India’s constitution lists 22 scheduled languages, including Assamese, Bodo, Dogri, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Manipuri, Santali and Sindhi. Use the same approach for any country: think of regions, then the language of each region.
Phobias and technical words
Phobia names are built from Greek roots: arachno- (spiders), claustro- (closed spaces), hippopotomonstrosesquippedalio- (long words, the joke one). If you know a few roots, you can recognise many phobias, but only type ones you know exist; invented compounds won’t be on the list.
Typefaces and names of things
Font prompts and other “name of a thing” prompts are crowded with whatever is on screen every day: Arial, Times New Roman, Comic Sans. Think of where type appears: road signs (Transport), airports (Frutiger), magazines (Futura, Garamond), coding (Consolas, Menlo).
Practise
These categories reward reading answer lists, because the patterns stick. Start with the prompts below, then test yourself in unlimited dives.