Frequently Asked Questions

5Qs is a free daily mystery puzzle game. Each day, a new scenario goes live with one or more hidden answers. You ask up to five questions to a constrained AI voice, then submit your guesses for what you think the hidden answer is.

Open the site, read the day's scenario, then ask up to five questions of the AI character. When you have a theory, submit your guesses for the hidden answer or answers. Fewer questions used means a higher score.

Each puzzle has up to 100 points. Half come from getting the hidden answers right (split evenly across however many unknowns the puzzle has, with partial credit for close answers). The other half is an efficiency bonus — you only earn it if you fully solve the puzzle, and it scales with how many of your five questions you had left over.

Answers are matched flexibly: exact spelling, fuzzy matching, substring containment, and a fallback AI judge for edge cases. If your answer was rejected, it likely missed the core noun the puzzle was looking for. The display answer shown after you finish the puzzle reflects the canonical phrasing.

Every 5Qs puzzle is built around a constrained voice — a perspective the AI character is locked into. The voice knows the answer but cannot just tell you. A doorman new to the city, a dog who only thinks in smell and crunch, an empty lot that has never been occupied before. The constraint shapes every reply, and figuring out how to question through the constraint is the game.

Past puzzles are available in the puzzle archive, where you can read the scenario and the voice tagline along with how other players scored. Live gameplay is reserved for the day a puzzle is the active daily, but the archive lets you browse the catalogue of every voice the game has shipped.

Puzzles are handcrafted and playtested through a multi-stage pipeline. Each one is built around a single hidden answer and a chosen voice, then revised against playtest data before going live. New puzzles drop daily at midnight Pacific Time.

Yes. 5Qs is completely free to play. No subscription, no paywall, no ads inside the puzzle flow.

No. You can play every day without signing in. Optional email sign-in is offered for cross-device stat sync and the Inner Circle referral program.

See the Privacy Policy for the full breakdown. In short: an anonymous local player ID, per-puzzle attempt records, and a hashed IP for rate limiting. If you sign in, your email is linked to your player record.

When you finish a puzzle, the result screen offers a share button that copies a spoiler-free summary of your score and streak. You can paste that into chat, social media, or anywhere else.

Inner Circle is a limited program (25 slots) for signed-in players. Each member gets a personal three-digit referral code. Recruit ten new players who play their first puzzle through your code and you complete Inner Circle, which unlocks recognition and future perks.

The AI voice is supposed to stay inside its constraint and avoid giving away the answer outright, but it will not invent false facts on purpose. If a response feels off, it is more likely the voice answering inside its lens than a deliberate misdirection.

Yes — use the Contact page or the in-game feedback button at the bottom of any puzzle. Tag your message as a bug, a puzzle idea, or general feedback so the team can triage it.

Yes. The puzzle archive lists every past daily puzzle with its scenario, voice tagline, and score-distribution stats once enough plays have rolled in. Spoilers (the actual answer, voice rules, and solution summary) are not exposed in the archive, so the catalogue stays interesting to read without ruining future replays.