Swissdle: how the game works

What it is

Swissdle asks for one Swiss Gemeinde (municipality) a day. You type a Gemeinde, the game compares it with the answer and colours each clue green, yellow or grey. You keep guessing until you have it.

The game knows all 2,110 Gemeinden of Switzerland, as listed by the Federal Statistical Office on 13 October 2026. Which of them can be the answer depends on the mode. Puzzle No. 1 was on 12 October 2026. A new Gemeinde comes at midnight Swiss time (Europe/Zurich), and everyone playing the same mode gets the same one. The server works out the answer from the date and sends it to your browser only once you have solved or revealed it.

Modes

Each mode has its own Gemeinde of the day, its own saved game and its own statistics. You can only guess Gemeinden that belong to the mode you are playing.

• Normal: the 200 largest Gemeinden by population. The smallest of them is Unterägeri (9,527 inhabitants).
• Hard: the 500 largest. The list ends with Chamoson (4,486).
• Impossible: all 2,110, down to Rebévelier in the Bernese Jura with 29 inhabitants. The name is meant seriously.
• Canton: all Gemeinden of one canton you pick, from Bern (334) and Vaud (300) down to Basel-Stadt and Glarus (3 each). The canton is known, so the canton column shows the district (Bezirk) instead. Nine cantons have no districts (AI, BS, GE, GL, NE, NW, OW, UR, ZG); there the column disappears.

Answers are drawn in rounds. Within one round every Gemeinde of the mode is the answer exactly once (200 days for Normal, 500 for Hard), and the last 30 of a round are kept out of the first 30 days of the next one, so nothing comes back within a few weeks.

The clues, column by column

Green means exact. Yellow means close, and hovering over a yellow tile tells you how close counts. Grey means neither. For numbers, an arrow shows whether the answer is higher or lower.

• Canton: green if it is the same canton. Yellow if it is another canton in the same large region. Switzerland has seven: Lake Geneva region, Espace Mittelland, Northwestern Switzerland, Zurich, Eastern Switzerland, Central Switzerland and Ticino.
• District (canton mode only): green or grey. There is no yellow.
• Language: the official language or languages of the Gemeinde. Green if they match exactly. Yellow if at least one matches, for example Biel/Bienne (German, French) against a German-speaking answer.
• Postcode: yellow if within 100 of the answer's postcode, with an arrow.
• Population: yellow if within 25% of the answer's population. The window is measured from the answer, not from your guess.
• Altitude: yellow if within 100 m, with an arrow.
• Distance: kilometres from your Gemeinde to the answer, centre to centre, plus an arrow pointing towards the answer. Yellow at 25 km or less.

An example. Suppose the answer is Thun (BE, German, 3600, 44,163 inhabitants, 560 m). These are real results from the game's own rules:

Fribourg's canton is yellow because Fribourg and Bern are both in Espace Mittelland. Bern misses the yellow distance by one kilometre, which is how it goes.

Hints

Three hints unlock after your 4th, 8th and 12th guess. In Normal, Hard and Impossible they are the large region, the canton and the first letter. In canton mode they are the postcode area (first two digits), the district (or, in cantons without districts, the number of letters in the name, not counting spaces, hyphens or dots) and the first letter. Hints do not affect your streak; the share text only says how many you used.

How to play well

• Use distance and arrow together. They are the strongest clue. After the first guess, go roughly the given distance in the direction of the arrow. If the next result points somewhere else, the answer lies where the two lines cross.
• Open in the middle. A first guess in the Mittelland, such as Bern or Olten, keeps the distance short in every direction and splits the canton column well. Geneva as an opener is brave. Normal has 45 Gemeinden in the Lake Geneva region, 37 in Zurich, and only 4 in Ticino.
• Language narrows Normal a lot. Only four Gemeinden in Normal are Italian-speaking (Lugano, Bellinzona, Locarno, Mendrisio), none is Romansh, and two are bilingual (Biel/Bienne and Fribourg). In Hard there are 19 with Italian and 3 with Romansh.
• Altitude is a quick filter. Only Crans-Montana (1,495 m) and Davos (1,559 m) in Normal are above 1,000 m. If the arrow still says higher at 900 m, you know where to go.
• Read the postcode's first digit. 1 is the Lake Geneva area, 3 Bern, 4 Basel, 6 Central Switzerland and Ticino, 7 Graubünden, 8 Zurich and the north-east, 9 St. Gallen and Appenzell.
• Use the filter. Once the canton (or, in canton mode, the district) is green, a checkbox above the input limits the dropdown to Gemeinden that still fit.
• Clicking into the empty search box lists every Gemeinde you have not tried yet. There is no limit on guesses, so browsing is allowed.

Data sources and licences

• Federal Statistical Office (BFS): commune register as of 13 October 2026 (name, canton, district, language region, large region) and STATPOP permanent resident population at the end of 2025. Gemeinden merged since then are added up.
• swisstopo: official postcode directory (postcode of the main locality; for the big cities the old-town postcode, e.g. Zürich 8001, Bern 3011, Basel 4001), swissNAMES3D for the village centre, and the swissALTI3D height service.
• Wikidata: names in other languages and altitudes. Wikidata's altitude is used if it is within 120 m of the swisstopo measurement at the centre; otherwise the measurement wins.

The BFS only records one language region per Gemeinde, so the eleven officially bilingual ones, such as Biel/Bienne, Fribourg and Domat/Ems, were added by hand. BFS and swisstopo data are free to use with the source named; Wikidata is CC0.

When the data is rebuilt (for example after the mergers on 1 January), the new list only takes effect from a fixed future midnight. Past answers never change.

FAQ

History

• 12 October 2026: puzzle No. 1. Normal used a hand-picked list of 208 well-known towns with rounded figures.
• 14 October 2026: Normal switched to the 200 largest Gemeinden from official data. Puzzles No. 1 and No. 2 kept their answers. 73 of the old 208, among them Adelboden, Andermatt and Arosa, are not in the new Normal list. Hard, Impossible and canton mode came with the new data. Yellow tiles now explain how close they are.
• 15 October 2026: the filter checkbox once the canton is green.

Play Swissdle

Other guides: Cantondle, CH-Soccerdle, Pilldle. Who makes these games: About.