Script Detective shows you a short text and asks a different question from its sibling: not where it's spoken, but what the WRITING SYSTEM is called. Cyrillic, Devanagari, Hangul, Ge'ez — seventeen scripts from around the world, ten per game.
Some are instantly recognisable once you've seen them once — Korean's neat blocks, Georgian's curls. The traps are the pairs: Thai against Khmer, Devanagari against Bengali, and the all-kana Japanese round that is NOT Chinese characters.
How to play
Look at the text in the middle of the screen, then type the name of its writing system.
Pick a suggestion or press Enter to lock in a guess. Guess as many times as you like — a wrong script drops out of the list.
Common alternate names count — "Korean" works for Hangul, "Chinese" for Chinese characters, "Ethiopic" for Ge'ez.
Stuck on one? Hit Skip to reveal the answer and move on — a skipped script does not score.
When you get it right (or skip), the game reveals the script's name and what the text says.
The clock counts up from your first guess — it is a stopwatch, not a time limit.
What counts in this quiz
Seventeen writing systems: Cyrillic, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Devanagari, Bengali, Tamil, Thai, Khmer, Burmese, Sinhala, Hangul, Hiragana, Chinese characters, Georgian, Armenian and Ge'ez. Each game draws ten.
Each script shows one of several sample texts, so repeat games vary.
What's not included — and why
No Latin-alphabet round — you are reading this page in it, so it would be a free point.
No dead scripts — every answer is a writing system in daily use somewhere today.
Good to know
Hangul was designed from scratch in the 1440s by King Sejong's scholars — the shapes of the letters mimic the shape of your mouth making the sound.
The Armenian alphabet has been in continuous use since the year 405.
Thai and Khmer look alike to newcomers, but Thai script actually descends from Khmer, not the other way round.