What does proximity mean in Proximo?
In Proximo, a French word game, two words are close when they are used in similar contexts. It isn't a human judgement or a list of synonyms: it is a calculation based on how words appear in text.
The idea comes from linguistics: you know a word by the company it keeps. "Orage" (storm) often sits next to "tonnerre" (thunder), "pluie" (rain) or "éclair" (lightning). So it ends up close to them, without being a synonym.
How words become numbers
Proximo relies on fastText word vectors for French, a public model trained on very large volumes of web pages and on Wikipedia. Each word is represented as a list of 300 numbers. Two words used in close contexts get lists that point in neighbouring directions.
To measure proximity, the game compares those directions: this is cosine similarity. The more aligned the two vectors are, the closer the words.
fastText also takes word fragments into account. Two words that share a root or a suffix can therefore move closer, on top of their closeness in usage.
How the day's list is built
When the day's game is prepared, the game looks up the words closest to the secret word in its French dictionary. Only fairly frequent words have a vector, so rare words cannot make the list. Proper nouns are left out.
Forms of the same word are then grouped. If "nuage" and "nuages" (cloud, clouds) are both close, only the closer form is ranked. The other becomes an equivalent that returns the same rank when you type it.
The first 100 words obtained this way are numbered #1 to #100. The ranking is fixed: the same for every player, all day long, and independent of your guesses.
What does "Hors liste" mean?
A "Hors liste" (off the list) word is not among the 100 neighbours kept. There are three possible cases:
- It is too far from the secret word, according to the calculation.
- It is too rare to have a vector, or it is misspelled: the game doesn't check that a word exists.
- It is another form of the secret word. To keep the list from filling up with variants of the answer, every form of the secret word is excluded. If the word to find is "orages", typing "orage" returns "Hors liste".
That last case is a trap, but it can also be a clue: a word that should be at the very top and comes back "Hors liste" is worth trying in another form.
Why some ranks are surprising
The calculation measures usage, not exact meaning. That has a few effects worth knowing:
- Opposites can be close. "Chaud" (hot) and "froid" (cold) appear in the same sentences.
- A word with several meanings blends them. Each word has a single vector: "avocat" carries both the fruit (avocado) and the profession (lawyer).
- Associated words count as much as synonyms. An object, a place or an action tied to the secret word can outrank a rarely used near-synonym.
The coloured bar under each guess follows the rank: almost full at #1, shorter as the rank grows, down to a thin sliver for a "Hors liste" word.
How the secret word is chosen
The secret word is drawn from the game's dictionary: 5 to 10 letters, no verbs, with a preference for common words. A word used in the last 60 days is set aside. The editorial team can also choose the word itself.
The theme shown on screen, one of about twenty such as "Animaux" (animals), "Sport" or "Météo" (weather), is set by the team or assigned automatically by an AI model. If the secret word has no vector, the list of neighbours is ranked by that AI model instead of the vector calculation.
What it means for your score
The ranking doesn't directly affect your score: only the number of wrong guesses counts, ranked or not. Each wrong guess costs about 30 points, each hint about 60, and the reference time is 4 minutes.
Hints follow the ranking backwards: the first reveals word #100, the next #99. They place you in the right area of meaning without bringing you too close too fast.
Going further
For the basic rules and a walked-through game, read how to play Proximo. To put all this to use, our Proximo tips offer seven practical strategies.