Champlab

How to Play Champlab

The complete rules: every column, every colour, every mode.

Champlab hides one League of Legends champion and gives you a limited number of guesses to find it. You don't get a picture, an ability or a splash — only the comparison between each champion you guess and the hidden one. Each guess adds a row to the grid, and each cell in that row tells you how close that attribute is. The skill is in picking guesses that rule out as many champions as possible.

Making a guess

Start typing a champion's name in the search box. The list filters as you type and hides champions you've already guessed this round; pick one with a click, a tap, or the arrow keys and Enter. Punctuation and spaces don't matter, so "chogath" finds Cho'Gath and "nunu" finds Nunu & Willump. The row appears instantly and the round ends when you name the answer, run out of guesses, or press Give up.

What each column means

Every champion is described by seven attributes. All of them are listed for every champion on the champion list.

  • Gender — Male, Female or Other. "Other" covers champions such as Blitzcrank, Fiddlesticks and Kindred who aren't presented as either. One value per champion.
  • Position(s) — the roles a champion is commonly played in: Top, Jungle, Mid, Bottom and Support. Many champions have two or three.
  • Species — what the champion is: Human, Yordle, Vastayan, Void-Being, Undead, Darkin and dozens of rarer tags. Hybrids have two, such as Kai'Sa (Human and Void-Being).
  • Resource — what their abilities cost: Mana for most, plus Energy, Fury, Rage, Flow, Manaless and a handful of unique bars like Blood Well or Crimson Rush. One value per champion.
  • Range type — Melee or Ranged. Champions who switch forms are listed as both: Elise, Gnar, Jayce, Kayle, Nidalee.
  • Region(s) — where the champion comes from in Runeterra's lore: Demacia, Noxus, Ionia, the Void and so on. "Runeterra" is used for champions not tied to any single faction. Some champions have two or three.
  • Release year — the year the champion came out, from the 2009 launch roster to the newest release.

Green, yellow and red

Each cell is coloured by comparing your guess with the answer:

  • Green — an exact match. For a column with several values, the whole list matches: same values, nothing missing, nothing extra. The order doesn't matter.
  • Yellow — a partial match. For multi-value columns, at least one value is shared but the lists differ. For the release year, your guess is within 2 years of the answer.
  • Red — no overlap at all. Gender and resource can only be green or red, since each champion has exactly one.

How partial matches work for positions and regions

This is where most new players lose guesses. Say you guess Wukong, listed as Top and Jungle.

  • If the answer is Lee Sin (Jungle only), the position cell is yellow: Jungle is shared, but Wukong's list also has Top, so the lists aren't identical.
  • If the answer is another Top/Jungle champion, such as Olaf, it's green.
  • If the answer is a Mid/Support champion like Lux, it's red — no role in common.

Regions work the same way. Guess Xin Zhao (Demacia, Ionia, Noxus) and the region cell turns yellow for any champion from any one of those three, green only for a champion with exactly that trio, and red for everyone else. That's why multi-region champions make good early guesses: they test several regions at once. Species and range type follow the same rule.

The flip side: yellow never tells you which value was shared. After a yellow on Wukong's positions, the answer could be pure Jungle, pure Top, Jungle/Mid, Top/Support or anything else that includes Top or Jungle but isn't exactly Top/Jungle. Your next guess should try to separate those cases.

The release year arrow

The year cell is green on the exact year. Otherwise it shows an arrow — ↑ if the answer came out later than your guess, ↓ if earlier — and it's yellow when the gap is 2 years or less, red when it's bigger. A yellow ↑ on a 2011 guess means the answer is from 2012 or 2013. A red ↓ on a 2012 guess can only mean 2009, because that's the first year on the roster.

Game modes

You pick a mode when you first visit, and can change it any time from Settings. Changing mode starts a new round; your stats stay.

  • Impossible — 1 guess. One shot. Get it right or don't get it at all.
  • Challenger — 5 guesses. One slip and the round is over.
  • Gold — 8 guesses. Room to narrow it down, but not to guess blind.
  • Noob — unlimited guesses. No loss screen. The round ends when you get it, reset, or refresh.

Noob is Champlab's truly unlimited mode: no guess cap and no loss, ideal for learning the roster. Challenger and Gold are the competitive modes, and the ones the strategy guide is written for. Whatever the mode, there's no daily limit — a new round starts as soon as the last one ends. The Quote game uses the same four modes, but with a single voice line instead of a clue grid.

Streaks, records and "Top X%"

Each mode keeps its own solved and lost counts, current streak, best streak and fewest-guesses record. If you allow it on your first visit, these are stored in your browser only — see the privacy policy.

When you win, Champlab also shows how you compare with everyone else. Every finished round, won or lost, is counted anonymously per mode by the number of guesses it took. Top X% is the share of all recorded rounds in your mode that were wins in as few guesses as yours or fewer. Solve Challenger in two and see "Top 9%", and it means only 9% of every Challenger round ever finished on Champlab was won that quickly. Losses count toward the total, so the figure reflects everyone who played, not just the winners. Your best streak gets a similar ranking — the share of all ended streaks in that mode that reached at least your length — once a mode has at least 100 recorded streaks, so the number means something.

Ready?

Start a round, keep the best opening guesses in mind, and check the FAQ if a cell ever looks wrong to you.