Koan

A hidden law silently divides words into resonant and silent — and you can never ask what it is. You can only test, watch, and deduce.

How to play

A secret rule judges every word as either resonant or silent. You feed it words and watch how they're sorted, building a theory of the underlying law from the pattern of answers. When you think you've cracked it, prove it by predicting which side new words fall on.

• Submit words and observe whether each is judged resonant or silent.
• Form a hypothesis about the hidden rule from the accumulating evidence.
• Confirm your theory by correctly predicting how fresh words are sorted.

Game modes

• Daily — one shared hidden rule for everyone each day.
• Practice — endless fresh rules to test your deduction.
• Difficulty — choose Easy, Medium or Hard to set how subtle the law can be.

Controls

• Desktop: type a word and press Enter, or click the on-screen controls.
• Phone & tablet: use the on-screen keyboard and tap to submit — fully touch playable.

Tips & strategy

• Change one thing at a time — test words that differ by a single feature to isolate the rule.
• Don't trust an early theory; deliberately try words that would disprove it.
• Track both sides — what stays silent is as informative as what resonates.

About Koan

Koan is an original free browser game in the hidden-rule induction genre, where the whole challenge is inferring an unstated law purely from how it classifies the words you throw at it.

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