Idiom Chain

How to play Idiom Chain (成语接龙)

Idiom Chain is an original digital take on 成语接龙 (chéngyǔ jiēlóng), the classic Chinese parlour game of linking four-character idioms end to end. In the traditional game, one player speaks a chengyu and the next player must reply with a different chengyu whose first character sounds the same as the last character of the one before it, and so on around the table for as long as anyone can keep the chain going. This version turns that into a head-to-head battle against the computer: it opens with an idiom, and you must answer with a legal continuation before your turn runs out. Every idiom, its pinyin (with tones) and a short English gloss come from an original, hand-built list of well-known four-character chengyu, so you can play and learn at the same time even if you are still building up your Chinese vocabulary. Because you choose your answer from a rack of tiles instead of typing hanzi, you can enjoy the whole game with nothing more than a mouse, a finger or arrow keys — no Chinese input method required.

The goal

Keep answering correctly until the computer itself cannot find a legal reply anywhere in its own vocabulary — that is your win condition. The round is short and single-elimination: one clean run is all it takes, and a win submits ranked points for the difficulty you chose. You lose only if you run out of your two skip tokens without ever landing the correct tile for the idiom currently on the table.

Setting up a round

Before you start, pick one of three difficulties: Easy, Normal or Expert. This controls how much of the idiom list the computer is allowed to draw from and how cleverly it plays, not how the chain rule itself works — the linking rule is identical at every level. Press Start Round and the computer immediately opens the chain with its first idiom, shown large in the centre of the board together with its pinyin.

The rules

• Every idiom in this game is exactly four Chinese characters long. To continue the chain, your idiom’s FIRST character must have the same reading as the LAST character of the idiom that was just played.
• You never type an answer. Instead you are shown a rack of six tiles — each one a complete four-character idiom with its pinyin underneath. At least one tile on the rack is always a legal continuation; the rest are decoys that do not chain from the current idiom.
• Tap or click the tile you believe is correct. A correct tile instantly extends the chain and the computer replies (if it can); an incorrect tile flashes red and costs you one of your two skip tokens.
• On Normal and Expert you also have a 30-second soft timer each turn — letting it run out counts exactly like tapping a wrong tile. Easy has no timer at all, so you can take all the time you like.
• No idiom is ever reused within a round, by either side, so the chain always moves to fresh territory as it grows longer.

Homophones: this game’s house rule

Traditional 接龙 is sometimes played with the strict rule that the next idiom must begin with the literal same character as the last one played. This game deliberately relaxes that to “same reading, any tone” — for example an idiom ending in a character read “zhōng” can be followed by any idiom starting with a DIFFERENT character that is also read “zhōng” in any of its four tones. We made this choice for two reasons: it mirrors how many casual, spoken versions of the game are actually played, and it keeps a fixed, finite idiom list interesting to chain through instead of quickly hitting dead ends. Every rack you are offered is built from this same homophone rule, so the tile you tap only needs to sound right, not look identical to the previous idiom’s last character.

Difficulty levels

Easy limits the computer to roughly 40% of the full idiom list and gives it no turn timer pressure on you, so chains tend to end quickly in your favour — a gentle way to learn the linking rule. Normal opens the computer up to about 70% of the list and adds the 30-second timer, giving a fair, moderately challenging match. Expert lets the computer see the entire list and, whenever it has a choice of legal replies, it deliberately favours the idiom that leaves you with the fewest good answers — a “chain-killing rare tail” strategy that makes long expert runs genuinely hard to sustain. At every difficulty the computer is guaranteed to only ever play an idiom that still leaves you at least one fair, correct tile to answer with; it will never trap you with an unwinnable rack.

Winning, losing and scoring

You win the round the moment the computer has no idiom left in its own vocabulary that can legally continue the chain. A win submits ranked points for the difficulty you played — 10 for Easy, 30 for Normal and 100 for Expert — to the Idiom Chain leaderboard. You lose only by exhausting both of your skip tokens: your first two misses (a wrong tile, a timeout, or an explicit skip) are forgiven and simply refresh your rack, but a third miss without ever answering correctly ends the round with no points.

Strategy tips

• Read every rack tile’s pinyin, not just the hanzi — the correct tile is defined purely by its first syllable’s reading, so sounding it out is often faster than trying to recognise the character.
• On Expert, expect the computer to steer the chain toward characters with few onward idioms. If you notice the same tricky ending characters recurring, they are worth learning first.
• Use your skips deliberately rather than guessing blindly — a wrong tap and a skip cost the same one token, so if you are unsure, a fresh rack is often worth more than a 50/50 guess.
• On Normal and Expert, decide quickly: reading the pinyin of all six tiles takes only a few seconds, leaving you plenty of the 30-second window to double-check before committing.

How scoring works

Only a full round win is scored. The points are fixed per difficulty rather than per move — 10 for Easy, 30 for Normal, 100 for Expert — rewarding you for taking on and beating a harder computer rather than for chain length. Losing a round, or leaving one unfinished, submits nothing; you can always start a fresh round and try again.

Frequently asked questions