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How to play Newly Minted

How Newly Minted works: guess the year five words took off in books, score up to 500 points, use hints and build a streak.

The goal

Guess the year each of five words took off in books, and score as close to 500 points as you can. Everyone gets the same five words on the same calendar day, and a new puzzle unlocks at midnight in your own time zone.

Playing a round

Here is one word from start to finish. Say the board shows “television”, with the label tech underneath it.

  1. Read the word and its category, shown as a small label: tech, science, slang, culture, politics, business, food or health.
  2. Type a four-digit year from 1800 to 2022 in the box or drag the slider, then press Lock in. You might picture living rooms in the 1950s and type 1950. Your guess cannot be changed after that.
  3. Read the reveal. “Television” took off in books in 1934, so a guess of 1950 is 16 years off and scores 39 points, a grey Miss (⚪ in the share grid). The reveal also draws how often the word appeared in books from 1800 to 2022, with a solid line at 1934 and a dashed line at your guess.
  4. Move on to the next word. After the fifth, you see your total score out of 500.

Colors and symbols

Each guess is scored blue 🔵, orange 🟠 or grey (⚪ in the share grid). Blue means Nailed it: 90 points or more, which is within 4 years of the take-off year. Orange means Close: 50 to 89 points, or 5 to 13 years off. Grey means a Miss: under 50 points, or 14 or more years off. Screen readers announce every score in words, so color is never the only signal.

Hints

Each word offers one optional hint: a 20-year window that contains the take-off year but is never centered on it, so the exact middle of the window is never the answer. A word always shows the same window. A free hint adds a light bulb to your shared result. When a short optional ad is available, you can watch it instead to reveal the same window without the light bulb.

The curve reveal

After you lock in a guess, Newly Minted draws how common the word was in printed books from 1800 to 2022 as a single curve, with a solid line marking its true take-off year and a dashed line marking your guess. Once you have finished the day’s puzzle, the answer page lists all five words with their take-off years, their peak years and how common each one is now. Reading a handful of these across a round is the quickest way to learn how differently words climb: some leap in a year or two, some creep for decades.

Streaks and statistics

Finishing the daily puzzle on consecutive days builds your streak. Open Stats to see how many puzzles you have played, your average score, your current and best streak, and how your scores are spread. Everything is saved in your browser, so clearing site data resets it.

Unlimited and archive

In unlimited mode you see one known word with its real take-off year and one hidden word, and you call whether the hidden word took off earlier or later. The two words are always at least 5 years apart, so no call hangs on a single year. Each right call keeps your run going; a wrong call ends it and reveals the answer, your best run is kept, and Play again starts a fresh run. The archive lets you replay any past daily puzzle; archive rounds count toward your statistics but not your streak.

Ready? Play today’s puzzle.