Size It Up: today's five animals, free

How to play Size It Up

Each round puts two silhouettes on a ground line. The lavender one is the reference: it is drawn at its real size and its size is written next to it. The gold one is yours: drag anywhere on the board, use the slider, pinch on a phone, or tap the arrow keys until you think it is at its real size, then press Lock in. The real size appears in green over your guess, and you score up to 100 by how close your guess was. Five rounds a day, 176 animals in the table, from a tardigrade to a blue whale. Full rules and a practice set on the how to play page.

Stuck? The hint narrows the real size to a window four times wide (three a day). Want more? Unlimited Size It Up draws random pairs in sets of 5, 10 or 20. Missed a day? Every past set is in the archive with the real sizes and sources.

Scoring

Scored by ratio, so half and double cost the same. Within 5% is a perfect 100; the score falls evenly on a log scale down to 0 at five times off.

Size It Up strategy: how to guess an animal's size within 5%

Within 5% either way scores 100, double or half scores 59, and five times off scores nothing, so Size It Up is a game about doublings, not about knowing exact figures. Every round gives you a reference animal at its true size, and the animal you resize is always between 3 and 100 times bigger or smaller than it: over the first 365 daily sets the median gap is 7.9×, and 61% of rounds stay under 10×. The habits below are what separate a 250 from a 450, with the numbers from Puzzlune's own daily sets.

What is the fastest way to estimate an animal's size?

Anchor to a person and count doublings. An adult is about 1.7 m tall and 45 cm across the shoulders; a hand is about 18 cm; a fingernail about 1 cm. From there, every animal is "about one person", "half a person", "two people" or "a quarter": a Labrador is about half a person long, a horse a little more than one person, a bus seven people, a mouse half a hand. Thinking in halves and doubles is exactly what the scoring rewards, because being one doubling off costs you 41 points and being two doublings off costs 86. You do not need the exact figure; you need the right doubling.

Should you compare with the reference animal or with a person?

Both, in that order. The reference is on the board at true scale, so first ask "how many of the reference fit into the animal I'm sizing?" and set your guess to that ratio; then sanity-check the number in the readout against a person. 51% of the time the animal you resize is the bigger of the two, so if you are unsure, bigger is the better bet. The readout shows metres and feet while you drag; the moment the number looks wrong against a person you know, stop and move back.

Which size is being compared: length, height or wingspan?

The one people actually quote for that animal, and the prompt says which. Body length is used for 79% of the animals you resize, standing height for 15% (giraffe, ostrich, bears on all fours measured at the shoulder) and wingspan for 5% (albatross, condor, eagle). The silhouette is scaled along that dimension, so a length is the width of the figure on the ground line and a height is how tall it stands. Read the word before you drag: a 2 m tall ostrich and a 2 m long crocodile look nothing alike on the board.

How do you handle very small or very large animals?

Use a different anchor. For anything under 10 cm, think in coins and fingers: a honeybee is a bit longer than a fingernail is wide, a housefly a little under one, an ant about half. For anything over 5 m, think in cars and buses: a car is about 4.5 m, a bus about 12 m, a blue whale two buses. The table on Puzzlune runs from 0.5 mm · 0.02 in (tardigrade) to 25 m · 82 ft (blue whale), and the five rounds of a day are drawn one from each fifth of that range, so every day has one tiny animal and one giant. On a typical day the smallest and largest animals on the board are 2157.5× apart.

When should you use the hint?

On the animal you know least, before you drag. The hint narrows the real size to a window four times wide, which is two doublings: with the window in hand, a guess at its geometric middle can never be more than one doubling off, so it scores at least 59, and placing it with a little judgement usually lands in the 80s or 90s. Three hints a day means three of the five rounds; spend them on the tiny and the giant animals, where a person is a weak anchor, and judge the middle sizes yourself.

How are the five daily pairs chosen?

By size band and by gap. The animals are sorted by size and split into five bands; each day takes one animal from each band to resize, in a shuffled order, and pairs it with a reference between 3× and 100× away, with the allowed gap widening through the day (up to 10× in round 1, 100× by round 5). No animal is resized twice in 30 days and no pair repeats. The round-by-round average gap over 365 days: round 1 5.8×, round 2 8.3×, round 3 13×, round 4 20.6×, round 5 19.6×. The animals you resize most often are american lobster, emu, giant centipede.

Size It Up daily, Size It Up practice or the Size It Up archive: which should you play?

Play the daily when you have five minutes, practice when you want to get better, the archive when you want a worked example. The daily. Five pairs, the same for everyone, three hints. It is the only mode that counts for your streak, and the one to share.

Endless practice. Sets of 5, 10 or 20 random pairs with unlimited hints. Nothing you do there spoils the daily.

The archive. Every past day stays playable, and each day's page draws the five pairs to scale with the real sizes and sources. Every page has the full solution, so it doubles as a worked example when a technique from the strategy above hasn't clicked yet.

Size It Up FAQ

What is Size It Up?

Size It Up is a size-guessing game. Each round shows two silhouettes on a ground line: a reference animal drawn at its real size with that size written next to it, and a second animal you have to resize until you think it is at its real size too. Lock it in and the real size appears over your guess with a score out of 100. Five rounds a day, 500 points at most.

Is this the Magnitudle Size It Up?

No. Magnitudle publishes the original Size It Up, with everyday objects, animals, landmarks and pop culture. Puzzlune's version is an animals edition with its own silhouettes (from PhyloPic, under open licences) and its own size table with a source link for every animal. It adds a live readout in metres and feet, a hint, unlimited mode and an archive where every past day is an answer page. We are not affiliated with Magnitudle.

How is Size It Up scored?

By ratio, so guessing half the real size costs the same as guessing double. Within 5% of the real size scores 100. From there the score falls evenly on a log scale: 20% off is 91, double or half is 59, three times off is 33, and five times off or more is 0. Five rounds make 500.

Is there a Size It Up unlimited mode?

Yes. Unlimited mode draws random pairs from the whole animal table in sets of 5, 10 or 20 rounds, with unlimited hints and no effect on your daily streak. The daily is the same five pairs for everyone; unlimited is as many sets as you like.

Is there a Size It Up archive?

Yes, free. Every past day is in the archive with its own page: the five pairs drawn to scale, the real sizes in metres and feet, how many times bigger one animal is than the other, and the source for each figure. You can replay any day; replays don't affect your streak.

Where do the animal sizes come from?

Each size is a typical adult figure (body length, standing height or wingspan, whichever is the number people usually quote for that animal), taken from the Wikipedia article linked on the reveal card and in the archive. Sizes vary between individuals, which is why the scoring forgives 5% either way. Spotted a bad figure? Use the contact page.

Is Size It Up the animal size game, size it up animals, or size it up geography?

Size it up game, size it up animals, size it up unlimited, size it up archive and the animal size comparison game are all searches for this kind of game. Puzzlune's Size It Up is the animals edition: no geography or pop culture here, just animals from a flea to a blue whale, five a day plus unlimited practice and an archive.

Do I need an account?

No. Progress, streak and stats are stored in your browser. Your streak counts a day once all five rounds are locked in.

Silhouettes are from PhyloPic, used under CC0 or CC BY. CC BY silhouettes by DS Biswas, Dianne Bray / Museum Victoria (vectorized by T. Michael Keesey), Edwin Price, Gareth Monger, Ivan Iofrida, Marina Vingiani, Stanislav Snäll and V. Deepak. Sizes are typical adult figures from the Wikipedia article linked on each animal's reveal card.