How to Play Guess the Song: Rules, Scoring and Modes

Guess the Song plays you a sliver of a hit record and asks what it is. The sliver starts at a tenth of a second, about the length of one drum hit. If that is not enough you can hear more, as much as the whole 30-second clip, but every extra moment makes the song worth less. That one trade is the game.

This guide covers everything a first-time player needs: the screen, the controls, how a song is scored, how a run works and what changes in a live room. It takes about five minutes to read and about five minutes to play your first run.

• A browser on a phone, tablet or computer. There is nothing to install and no account to make.
• Sound. The game plays nothing until you press a key, since browsers block audio until you do. If a clip seems silent, check your volume and press Play again.
• Headphones, ideally. A tenth of a second through a phone speaker is a much harder puzzle than the same clip through headphones.

Three things sit on the start screen.

• Play solo starts a run of five songs at your own pace.
• Play multiplayer opens the live rooms, with a count of how many people are playing now.
• Run options lets you choose which songs a solo run draws from: any mix of genres, particular artists, a range of years, and two switches. More on those below.

Your best run so far is shown here too. It is kept in your browser, and in your account if you are signed in.

Each song is a clip of up to 30 seconds, drawn as a waveform across the screen. When a song begins, only its first tenth of a second is yours.

• Drag along the waveform to choose how much of the clip you want to hear. The length you have chosen is shown as you drag.
• The four length keys under the waveform jump straight to 0.1, 0.5, 1 and 3 seconds.
• Play plays the clip from its start to the length you have chosen. The key names the length, so it reads Play 0.10s at the start of every song.
• The +1s key buys one more second and plays only that new second, carrying on from where the last snippet stopped.
• Stop cuts the sound if you want silence to think.

The rule is simple once you see it: dragging is free, and playing is what costs.

You can drag the scrubber back and forth as much as you like. Nothing is spent until you press Play at a longer length, and from then on that length is paid for. Replaying anything you have already paid for costs nothing, and the length keys you have paid for are marked so you can tell. Dragging back to a shorter length does not give points back.

Above the waveform, the game always tells you where you stand. Worth now is what the song pays if you name it with what you have heard. While you are dragging past that, it switches to Worth if you play this and shows how many points the longer clip would cost, so you never pay for audio by surprise.

When you think you know it, type into the search box. You can type the title or the artist, and the list under the box narrows as you go. From three letters of an artist's name, the list shows every song of theirs that the run can draw from, which is often enough to jog a memory the audio alone did not. Pick the song from the list to make your guess.

• Right: the song is scored and the answer is shown.
• Wrong: the song loses 500 points, the wrong title is marked, and you carry on. A wrong guess never ends a song, so you can keep listening and keep guessing until you have it. You cannot pick the same wrong song twice.
• Skip: if you are truly stuck, the skip key beside +1s ends the song and shows the answer. A skipped song scores nothing.

Once a song is settled you can play the whole clip, then press Next for the next song, or Results after the fifth.

A song is worth up to 10,000 points. The value falls as you hear more of the clip, fastest at the very start, because the first moments are where the clues are thickest. Named with no wrong guesses, a song pays:

• 0.1 seconds: 10,000
• 0.5 seconds: 7,388
• 1 second: 6,417
• 3 seconds: 5,093
• 10 seconds: 4,006
• The whole 30 seconds: 3,500

Then take off 500 for each wrong guess. So a song named at 1 second after two wrong guesses pays 5,417. The clip alone never takes a song below 3,500, which means a long, careful listen that ends in the right answer is still worth more than a third of a perfect one. Wrong guesses can take a song lower, all the way to nothing.

A solo run is five songs, and it gets harder as it goes. The five stages are Easy, Medium, Hard, Expert and Brutal, ordered by how many times the world has streamed each song, the most familiar first. A perfect run is 50,000 points.

When the run ends, your score is stamped with a title:

• Music Genius: 45,000 or more
• Music Expert: 35,000 or more
• Music Buff: 25,000 or more
• Radio Regular: 15,000 or more
• Shower Singer: any score above zero
• Silence Enjoyer: zero

There is no daily limit. Press Play again for a new run, or Change options to change what it draws from. The game also remembers the songs it dealt you recently and steers away from them, so back-to-back runs feel fresh.

The library holds more than 6,000 charting tracks from 1980 to now. Run options narrow it.

• Genre: Pop, Hip-Hop, Alternative, Rock, Dance, R&B and Country, in any mix, or All genres.
• Artists: pick up to 60.
• Years: any range from 1980 to this year.
• Hits only is on to start with, and keeps every song to at least 700 million streams. Switch to All songs to let in less-streamed tracks.
• Clean only leaves out explicit tracks, which are allowed by default.

A narrow pool, such as one artist, is ranked within itself, so a run still opens on that artist's biggest song and ends on a deep cut. The search box only offers songs from the pool your options leave in play.

Play multiplayer opens a list of live rooms, each holding up to 50 people who all hear the same song at the same second. Each song starts at 0.1 seconds for everyone, there are 20 seconds to name it, and then the answer plays and the next song follows. Rooms run on a clock rather than a host, so there is nothing to set up.

A room scores a song exactly as a run does, plus a bonus of up to 2,500 for answering quickly: the full amount in the first second, and a little less with each second after. Join a public room from the list, or create a private one and send friends its code. The whole of that side of the game, including how a private room waits for its players to press Ready, is in our guide to playing a music quiz with friends.

The Share key on the results copies a short text: the game's name, your score out of 50,000, your title, and one line per song saying how long you took to name it, or a cross for a miss. It gives nothing away about which songs they were, so you can post it anywhere.

Three things make the first run go better. Put headphones on. Press Play at 0.1 seconds even if it feels pointless, because now and then a song names itself and that is worth 10,000. And if nothing comes, use the length keys to jump to half a second or a second rather than creeping up a tenth at a time.

After a few runs you will start to see where your points go. When you are ready to get them back, read how to get better at song guessing games, then open Guess the Song and see how much of the clip you really need.