How to play

How to play Size It Up

Two animals on a ground line. One is drawn at its real size and tells you what that size is. Resize the other until it is at its real size too.

The rules

• The lavender silhouette is the reference. It never moves, and its size (length, height or wingspan) is written under it.
• The gold silhouette is yours. Drag anywhere on the board (right or up to grow, left or down to shrink), pinch on a phone, move the slider, or press the arrow keys (Shift for bigger steps). The readout shows your current guess in metres and in feet.
• Press Lock in (or Enter). The real size appears in green over your guess, with the figure, the source and your score.
• Five rounds a day, scored out of 100 each, 500 in total. The daily is the same five pairs for everyone and changes at midnight, your time.

Scoring

Scored by ratio, so guessing half the real size costs the same as guessing double. Within 5% is a perfect 100, and the score then falls evenly on a log scale to 0 at five times off.

Which size is being compared?

Each animal has one size that people actually quote: body length for most (nose to tail base, or total length for snakes and fish), standing height for the tall ones (giraffe, ostrich, a person), wingspan for the big fliers. The reference label and the prompt both say which. The silhouettes are scaled along that dimension, so a 1.9 m lion is drawn 1.9 m long, and a 5.5 m giraffe is drawn 5.5 m tall.

The hint

The hint (the bulb) narrows the real size to a window four times wide, for example "between 1 m and 4 m long". The daily allows 3 hints; unlimited mode has no limit. A round played with a hint shows 💡 in the summary and in your share text.

Tips

Anchor to a person: 1.7 m tall, about 0.45 m across the shoulders. Then think in doublings. A big dog is about half a person long; a horse is a bit longer than a person is tall; a bus is about seven people. For tiny things, a fingernail is about 1 cm and a hand is about 18 cm. Judging in doublings is exactly what the score rewards: one doubling off is 59, two is 14. More on the strategy section of the daily page.

Try a set

A three-round practice set; nothing here is saved.

Ready? Play today's five or jump into unlimited mode.

Silhouette credits

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.