Perfect Pitch Puzzle

Perfect Pitch Puzzle takes the Wordle format and points it at your ears instead of your vocabulary. Every day the game hides the opening of a familiar melody and asks you to name its notes by listening, not reading. Instead of typing letters that spell a word, you enter note names and watch tile feedback tell you how close your ear got.

What is Perfect Pitch Puzzle?

The core loop is simple to describe and harder to pull off: the game plays the first notes of a real, familiar melody, and you try to identify them using the letter names A through G, including sharps and flats. On the standard modes the puzzle covers the melody's first six notes. After you submit a guess, the tiles give Wordle-style feedback so you can see which notes you placed correctly and where your ear went wrong, and you use that to refine your next attempt. One new puzzle arrives each day.

The skill being tested is relative pitch, not spelling or trivia recall. There is no text clue to reason about; you either hear the interval between two notes correctly or you do not. The game does remove one common source of confusion, though. The creators explain that the octave shifts along with the solution melody, so you never have to work out which octave a note sits in. You only have to name the pitch. They added this after early players got confused when a note that sounded higher by interval turned out to be written lower on the keyboard.

The game offers three difficulty levels, easy, normal, and hard, plus a separate choice of instrument for playing the notes. Hard mode originally used the same six-tile structure as the other modes, but the creators expanded it to eight tiles after early players complained it was too easy, so on hard you are naming eight notes instead of six. For anyone who finds even that comfortable, the creators recommend pairing hard mode with the "bird_tweet" instrument, whose notes they describe as almost indistinguishable. Sharps and flats were a later addition too; the creators note that the first fifty or so songs in the database all had openings that fit in C major because support for accidentals took a long time to build.

Perfect Pitch Puzzle was introduced on Hacker News' Show HN board in November 2023 under the username lpnotes. The poster described it as a side project their family had worked on, on and off, for about a year, and mentioned that they and their brother both have perfect pitch. The idea came while playing Wordle: what if you guessed musical notes instead of words, and the notes were the opening of a familiar melody? An early version was literally called "musical wordle" before they renamed it to avoid trading on the Wordle name. The creators are careful not to promise the game will grant perfect pitch, but they report that regular players, musicians and non-musicians alike, have told them it improved their ability to identify notes by relative pitch and to remember tunes.

How to play Perfect Pitch Puzzle

1. Open Perfect Pitch Puzzle at perfectpitchpuzzle.com.
2. Pick a difficulty level, easy, normal, or hard, and an instrument before you start listening.
3. Press play to hear the opening notes of the hidden melody.
4. Enter your guess using the letter names A through G; sharps and flats can appear. Standard modes ask for six notes, hard mode asks for eight.
5. Read the tile feedback after each guess to see which notes you have right, and use it to refine your next attempt.
6. Keep guessing and replaying the melody until you identify the full note sequence, then come back the next day for a new tune.

Tips and strategy

• Start on easy or normal if you are new to ear training; hard mode asks you to name eight notes instead of six.
• Ignore the octave entirely. The game shifts the octave along with the melody, so the only thing you need to identify is the pitch letter.
• Listen for the shape of the melody first, whether the notes climb, fall, or repeat, before trying to pin down exact letter names.
• Use your correct tiles as anchors and focus your next replay on the notes you are still unsure about rather than the whole sequence.
• If a note sounds like it repeats a pitch you already placed, guess that same letter again rather than assuming it must be different.
• Because the hidden tunes are familiar melodies, try humming the opening back to yourself between listens; recognizing the tune can shortcut identifying individual notes.
• Once regular instruments feel easy, try the bird_tweet instrument on hard mode. The creators themselves call its notes almost indistinguishable and treat it as the game's final boss.

Good to know

Category

Music

Resets

Daily, one new melody per day

Notes per puzzle

Six (eight on hard mode)

Cost

Free to play

Modes

Easy, Normal, Hard, plus selectable instruments

Feedback

Wordle-style tile feedback after each guess

Launched

November 2023 (Show HN)

Platform

Web browser

Perfect Pitch Puzzle FAQ

Is Perfect Pitch Puzzle free to play?

Yes. It is a free browser game built as a family side project, and the creators' launch post mentions no pricing or paywall.

How do you play Perfect Pitch Puzzle?

You listen to the opening of a hidden melody and guess its notes by letter name, A through G, with sharps and flats possible. Standard modes ask for six notes and hard mode asks for eight, with Wordle-style tile feedback after each attempt to guide your next guess.

Is Perfect Pitch Puzzle like Wordle?

Deliberately so. The creators came up with the idea while playing Wordle and even called an early version "musical wordle" before renaming it. The difference is that you guess musical notes by ear instead of letters in a word, so it works your relative pitch rather than your vocabulary.

When does Perfect Pitch Puzzle reset?

The game presents one new musical puzzle per day, according to its creators, though the exact reset time was not confirmed.

Who made Perfect Pitch Puzzle?

A family who worked on it as a side project for about a year. It was introduced on Hacker News' Show HN board in November 2023 under the username lpnotes; the poster mentioned that they and their brother both have perfect pitch, but no personal or company names were given.