Kotoba: Japanese Word GuessFree, no sign-up

Enter a 5-kana Japanese word (4 kana in 4-kana mode) and press Check. Each kana gets a color: green means the right kana in the right spot, yellow means the kana is somewhere else in the word, gray means it isn't in the word. Turn every kana green within 10 guesses to win.

The color clues work the same way. Instead of 5 English letters, you guess a Japanese word written in 5 hiragana. There are many more kana than letters, so you get 10 guesses.

Each is one kana. Gakkou (school) is ga + small tsu + ko + u, 4 kana, and shashin (photo) is shi + small ya + shi + n, 4 kana. A kana with dakuten (ga) and the one without (ka), and a small kana (small tsu) and the full-size one (tsu), count as different kana.

Yes. Type romaji in the box (sakana, gakkou, shashin) and press Enter, and it's turned into hiragana. You can also tap the kana keyboard. Loanwords are written in hiragana too (omuraisu).

Answers are everyday nouns such as animals, food, tools and places. You can guess any of about 20,000 words (5 kana) in the word list; words not in it are rejected without using up a guess. The leaderboard ranks by number of guesses, then time. You only need a nickname, and guesses are checked on the server.