The word game played at Chinese family tables
成语接龙 Idiom Chain
Finish one idiom and the next must begin with the character it ended on. 392 idioms joined by 693 legal links, four levels from HSK 1–4 vocabulary up to idioms the HSK lists never reach. 51 of them carry the whole origin story on their own idiom page.
- Watch the glowing character. The last character of the idiom on the chain is the one the next idiom must start with.
- Pick the idiom that begins with it — tap a card, or press 1–6.
- Nothing repeats. An idiom already in your chain is spent, exactly as in the real game.
- Three lives. A wrong pick or a run-out clock costs one. Answer fast for a time bonus, and answer in a row for a combo up to ×5.
- Watch for traps on Advanced and Expert — some wrong answers contain the link character, just not at the front.
成语接龙 chéngyǔ jiēlóng means roughly “idioms joining dragons”, and the rule is one sentence: the character an idiom ends on is the character the next idiom must start with. Nothing else is allowed to carry the chain — not the meaning, not the theme, not a character in the middle.
That chain is not an illustration written for this paragraph — it was produced by the same generator the game uses, walking the same links, so the example cannot show a chain the game would reject.
The difficulty is that recognising an idiom and producing one are different skills. Most learners can tell you what 一心一意 means; far fewer can name an idiom beginning with 意 while a clock runs. That gap is exactly what the game trains, and it is why 接龙 is still the standard classroom drill in China rather than a novelty.
A level here sets a vocabulary ceiling rather than a label. The bands are read from the official HSK word lists the site already publishes: an idiom's level is the level of its hardest character, so Beginner genuinely contains no character you would not have met by HSK 4.
| Level | Vocabulary | Chain | Choices | Clock |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 入门 Beginner | HSK 1–4 characters only, five idioms, four choices and a generous clock. | 5 idioms | 4 | 22 s |
| 进阶 Intermediate | Adds HSK 5 vocabulary and a sixth link, with less time to find it. | 6 idioms | 4 | 18 s |
| 高手 Advanced | HSK 6 vocabulary, seven links, six choices — and the wrong ones now contain the link character in the wrong place. | 7 idioms | 6 | 15 s |
| 宗师 Expert | The whole bank including idioms beyond HSK, eight links, six choices and twelve seconds. | 8 idioms | 6 | 12 s |
It is recall, not recognition
A multiple-choice meaning quiz asks you to recognise. Chaining asks you to search your own memory under a constraint — the hardest and most useful retrieval there is.
It builds a network
Idioms learned as a flat list stay a flat list. Learned as links, each one has neighbours, and a character you have chained through is a character you can find again.
It is a real game
Chinese speakers actually play this — at dinner, in class, on television. Knowing the format is a small piece of cultural fluency on top of the vocabulary.