How to play CognateForge
1 · The board
You get nine words drawn from several languages — English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and romanized Hindi and Ukrainian. Hidden inside them are three families of three. Every family is a set of cognates: words in different languages that descend from the same ancestral root (like NIGHT, NOCHE, and NUIT, all from Latin noct-).
2 · Find a family
Pick three words you think share a root, then Check. Get it right and the family locks in — and you'll see the root it came from and a note on how the sounds shifted (that's Grimm's Law at work when an old p becomes English f, or an old k becomes h). Not quite? You'll get a gentle hint — nothing lost, just try again.
3 · The Meaning Rule 🔑
Here's what makes CognateForge different: you can only play a word once you've shown you know what it means. A word you haven't met shows a small new tag — activate it and choose its meaning from three options. One of the wrong options is often a false friend — a look-alike that is not related (Ukrainian TRY means "three", not English "try"!). Right or wrong, you'll see the real meaning, and the word joins your own list from then on.
4 · Solve the board
Trace all three families back to their roots to solve the puzzle. There's no timer and no streak to lose — take as long as you like. When you finish, you'll see how many new words you met across languages.