How many of the 170k English words do you know?

Ignoring the validity of the test, one of the more strange things I noticed is that apparently native English speakers only have a total vocabulary of 15k to 35k words? I probably live in a bubble, but that seems profoundly low.

This was my result. I am clueless who Stephen Fry is.

SCIENTIFIC ESTIMATE 74,000 words "Unbelievable. Are you actually Stephen Fry in disguise?"

You mastered 93 new words! THE VERDICT

You are a person of few words, or perhaps just a mysterious one. Quite intriguing. REQUIRED READING

Read the dictionary from A to Z. It's a gripping tale with a terrible plot.

66k

I am trying to keep a subset. I don't aim for perfection so knowing all words is rather a pointless exercise in futility.

The wrong answers were generated by AI, and for nearly every entry 2 could be eliminated, so even a monkey can get 50% right.

Improve the wrong answers to be closer to the correct answer, to test the subject’s mastery.

Anyone who has practiced standardized tests would do well on this, even with poor vocab.

Also, too many Britishisms

At least three

Why not add keyboard shortcuts? Would make a much more polished desktop experience.

> You know 60000 words, that’s not a lot, go back to reading the dictionary

Goes to the about section: an average native speaker knows 35000 words.

Ah yes, the classic British insult, should have known it.

You don't need to know the words since 3 out of the 4 definitions are silly.

I got 74,400

You mastered 88 new words!

100%!

They got the second word wrong, I got it right, but still scored against me. Haha.

Impartial does not mean "treating all parties equally". It means "uninterested in the results". Fair would be "treating all equally". That's why there's a phrase "fair and impartial". "Partial" of course, doesn't mean "unfair", so negating it can't turn it into "fair". Partial means to favor one side or the other.

This is why when people tell me I'm wrong, so often I feel smarter than they are. HN quizzes are conditioning me for some antisocial attitudes, I think.

A couple

The words are so easy that this is pointless, and three clicks per word means I'm not going to get to the harder ones at the end. A proper spread of very difficult words split between scientific, historical, artistic, linguistic, colloquial, old, new, colonial, etc would give a better sampling. If I know "palimpsest" I probably know "pledge" you don't need to cover much of the easy stuff.

The initial section is way too long. Perhaps do an exponential difficulty increase?

I got 93 words (not a native speaker), but the expert/grandmaster words were kinda easy?

> You mastered 100 new words!

No, I read about 97 words I already knew and guessed at a couple of made-up ones like "snollygoster".

Is this what passes for an advanced vocabulary in the US?

Also, it took far too many clicks per word, pretty tedious stuff.

I got 75,150

WAY too many clicks per word. One, max.

The green button (which should not exist) was also hidden under Firefox for Android's address bar until I tried to "scroll* to hide it.

76

Funny that lots of words can be guessed correctly if one knows a few European languages. I speak Dutch, German, Russian, English and was able to recognize most of the words without ever using it in English. For example Seldom. It's very similar to Zelden in Dutch. I would never use the word Seldom though.

Seems too easy compared to the other tests like that I I've taken (my wife and I have a mini thing about this cause as in immigrant I'm not legally allowed to win at Scrabble but I do occasionally), I got 3 wrong and guessed maybe 3 more correctly without knowing them (vibe based i was usually between the two), getting 77k. That seems improbable... Also kinda lazy with many expert words where the longest definition is correct more often than not.

70,900

That was fun! tho a lot were cuz the longer the answer, the more likely it was to be right (for words I had utterly no clue)

Was really hard to stop once started lol

The triple click is annoying.

I mean, select the word, then press check, then press continue.

It could be one single click and move to the next, show me my last result at the same time you ask me for the next one.

I got 98 words right and it estimated I know 82k words. That's less than half the quoted 170k number, so what would it have estimated at 99 or at 100?

I was doing well until I got to grandmaster.

Then I was doing poorly in grandmaster, until I realize you can ace grandmaster by just picking the longest explanation every time.

Cool concept. but...

Vibe coders need to be forced to spend one day learning basic CSS before they're allowed to use an LLM to make a website and the internet would be a lot more pleasant as we move forward with slopification.. It doesn't have to be sloppy, and doesn't take all that much studying to at least be able to steer an llm in the right direction to make something look nice. At this point everything is just the same 3 colors and a centered flex column with weird spacing.

this is a test for willingness to put up with the whole 100. It says something.

3 clicks per is what gives it away. and the little compliments. and that it's 100 questions

whenever I run out of words I know, I make new ones.

when you don’t know the right answer is always the longest one…

The UI reminds me of another language-related app...

I mean I know all English words, but this test has a problem that most correct answers are the longest ones.

"How much time would you be willing spend on a poll just for the ego boost of being told your vocabulary is large?"

... got 95. Can't believe there's a word for a neighbor whose house is on fire.

> "Yield: Produce or provide a natural product"

Eh?

Meh. The UX should be able to simply have the selection indicate it is the choice rather than having to submit it too. It's too cumbersome to click through...

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I know maybe 20-30. I'm aware of maybe a few thousand.

I use the language to understand not get an effect

Interesting, I don't have the time to go through 100 though and having to click on answer and then mouse down to continue is a slog.

Fun fact: there's a test you can do called wordsum which correlates extremely highly, like .71, to IQ. It's just asking you 10 vocabulary questions. It turns out knowing advanced vocabulary correlates really well to IQ.

It marked this definition for “Candid” as incorrect. “Secretive and very guarded”

But Candid can certainly mean secretive, as in “Candid camera”.