Pilldle: how the daily medicine game works

Pilldle is a trivia game, not medical advice. Its ratings are simplified for play, and nothing here says whether or how to take a medicine. Ask a doctor or pharmacist for that.

What it is

Pilldle picks one medicine a day, and you guess it. Every guess shows seven clues, coloured by how close they are to the answer. You can guess from a list of 422 medicines. Since 15 October 2026 the answer always comes from the 146 best-known of them, measured by how often their Wikipedia articles are read in English, German, French and Italian.

Puzzle No. 1 was on 12 October 2026, the same day as Swissdle No. 1. A new medicine starts at midnight Zurich time, and everyone gets the same one on the same day. The game itself is in English.

Modes

Classic (pilldle.dailyguess.org/) is the original game: all 422 medicines, one answer a day.

From 22 October 2026 there are four themed modes next to it. Each has its own daily medicine, and you can only guess medicines from that group: 47 to 63 medicines, of which 40 to 62 can be the answer. The clues and hints work exactly as in Classic.

Mental health (/psych): antidepressants, antipsychotics, benzodiazepines, sleep medicines, ADHD stimulants, and medicines for nicotine and alcohol dependence.
Infections (/infections): antibiotics, antifungals, antivirals, antimalarials and antiparasitics.
Heart & blood vessels (/heart): blood pressure, cholesterol, anticoagulants, rhythm and heart-failure medicines.
Pain & anaesthesia (/pain): opioids, NSAIDs, migraine medicines, local and general anaesthetics, muscle relaxants.

Small groups make the start easier, but neighbours in a group look alike, so the last few guesses are the hard part.

The clues, column by column

Green is an exact match, grey no match. Only the three list columns can be yellow, meaning some of it matches; a company is right or wrong.

Company: the originator, meaning the company that discovered the substance or, if it came from a university or hospital, the one that first sold it. Historical names stay, so Ciba, Geigy, Ciba-Geigy, Sandoz and Novartis are five different values, and Merck & Co. is not Merck (Darmstadt).
Category: the drug class, such as SSRI, Statin, Opioid or Benzodiazepine. There are 130 different categories in the list. "Atypical antidepressant" against "SSRI" is plain grey.
Intake form: every form the substance is sold in somewhere (tablet, oral liquid, injection, patch, eye drops and so on, 23 in total). Green if the list is exactly the same, yellow if at least one form is shared, grey if none is.
Dose unit: the units the strengths are labelled in: mg, mcg, g, % or units. Same rule as forms.
Main side effects: always exactly three, picked from the common ones in the product information. Green only if all three are the same, yellow if one or two are shared.
Withdrawal: how severe the symptoms can be after stopping regular use abruptly, on a scale of None, Low, Moderate, High, Very high.
Addiction: how much the substance is misused or causes dependence in real life, same five steps.

For Withdrawal and Addiction, a wrong value is grey with an arrow: "higher" means the answer is further up the scale, "lower" means further down. One step off is still grey.

Example: the answer is Diclofenac, you guess Tramadol, then Ibuprofen.

Guess	Company	Category	Intake form	Dose unit	Main side effects	Withdrawal	Addiction
Tramadol	Grünenthal	Opioid	Capsule, Tablet, Oral liquid, Injection, Suppository	mg	Nausea, Dizziness, Constipation	High, lower	Moderate, lower
Ibuprofen	Boots	NSAID	Tablet, Capsule, Oral liquid, Oral powder, Injection	mg	Stomach upset, Nausea, Dizziness	None	None

After two rows you know: an NSAID rated None on both scales, with stomach upset among its side effects (Tramadol ruled out nausea and dizziness), not made by Boots, that its forms are not exactly Ibuprofen's five, and that it has a unit besides mg (Diclofenac has mg and %, for its gels).

Hints

Three hints unlock as you guess: the category after 4 guesses, the company after 8, and the first letter after 12. You have to press each one, and the share text counts them, as in "(1 hint)". There is no limit on guesses. If you give up, "Reveal the answer" ends the round after you press it twice; it counts as not solved.

Once the category is green, an "Only show" filter appears above the search box. Ticked, the list offers only that category. It is off by default.

How to play well

Open with a common class, not a famous name. Category is the column that narrows things most, and 66 different categories appear among the 146 answers. Benzodiazepines, antibiotics and opioids are the most frequent with 9 answers each, then antihistamines with 7.
Read the two scales together. 107 of the 146 answers have Addiction "None" and 79 have Withdrawal "None". Two grey "higher" arrows point to opioids, benzodiazepines, stimulants and the like; two greens at None rule them out.
Search by class. The search box matches names first and then categories, so typing "statin" brings up all six statins (plus Nystatin, an antifungal that only sounds like one) and "benzo" the benzodiazepines.
Don't spend guesses on the dose unit. 119 of the 146 answers are labelled in mg only, so a yellow or green unit tile tells you little. A non-mg unit is the rare useful case: % usually means a cream, gel or eye drops are on the market, and only eight medicines in the whole list use "units": five insulins, enoxaparin, epoetin alfa and nystatin.
Side effects are a triple. Nausea is one of the three for 48 answers, drowsiness for 43, so yellow there is cheap. Rare ones like "Discolored body fluids" or "Slowed breathing" are worth more.
Company is a history quiz. Hoffmann-La Roche has the most answers (9), then Merck & Co. (8) and Parke-Davis (7). Green category but grey company: try a rival firm's drug of the same class.
In Infections, don't count on the category. All 30 antibiotics in the data share the category "Antibiotic", so forms and side effects do most of the work there.

Data sources and licences

The list was built and checked on 14 October 2026.

Swissmedic, list of authorised human medicinal packs (status 30 September 2026): Swiss authorisation, forms and strengths of Swiss packs, the narcotics list.
Wikidata (CC0): names and ATC codes as a cross-check.
Wikimedia pageviews (CC0), English, German, French and Italian Wikipedia, October 2025 to September 2026: how well known a medicine is. This decides which medicines can be the answer.
openFDA Drugs@FDA (public domain): forms of products sold in the US.
Withdrawal and Addiction are our own simplified ratings, checked against product information, the US DEA schedules and the Swiss narcotics ordinance (BetmVV). Wikipedia served only for cross-checks; no text was copied.

Data changes never touch a day that has already started. A new data version only takes effect from a future midnight, and every earlier day keeps the answer it had. That is how the switch to the current list worked on 15 October 2026.

FAQ

Is the answer the same for everyone?

Yes. The server works it out from the Zurich date, fixed in advance. Past days can't be replayed; yesterday's medicine is shown at the bottom of the page.

Why is my streak gone?

The streak counts days solved in a row. A missed day or a revealed answer resets it. Stats live in your browser, so another browser, private mode or cleared site data starts from zero.

Why is a medicine I know not in the list?

The list has 422 medicines, not every authorised one. Some common ones are missing, for example lithium, codeine and heparin.

Why can a well-known medicine never be the answer?

The answer list is the 150 most-read medicines (with some Swiss household names added, and without Ranitidine, which was withdrawn in 2020), minus four without a reliable first-authorisation year: Testosterone, Ketoprofen, Phenprocoumon and Chlorhexidine. That leaves 146. You can still guess all of them.

Can the same medicine come back?

Each of the 146 answers comes up once before the list is shuffled again. The current round runs from 15 October 2026 to 9 March 2027.

Is a "Very high" rating a warning about my medicine?

No. The scales are a game simplification, mostly set per drug class. They say nothing about your treatment. Never stop or change a medicine because of a game; talk to your doctor or pharmacist.

History

12 October 2026: Pilldle No. 1. Up to 14 October 2026 the answers come from the original list of 212 medicines.
15 October 2026: new data. 422 medicines can be guessed, answers come from the 146 best-known, ratings and forms re-checked. Days before keep their old answers. The "Only show" category filter is added.
22 October 2026: themed modes Mental health, Infections, Heart & blood vessels, Pain & anaesthesia.

Play Pilldle

Other guides: Swissdle · Cantondle · CH-Soccerdle · About Daily Guess