About

A playground for the shape of sound

On 15 October 2026, researchers at the University of Parma reported that dogs show the bouba/kiki effect, the century-old finding that people around the world match "bouba" to round shapes and "kiki" to spiky ones. By the weekend it was all over science news and the Hacker News front page. This site lets you take the test yourself and then play with it.

What's here

  • The Shape of Sound Test: 10 or 20 rounds of generated words and shapes, with classic rounds from 1929 and 2001. You're compared with published human and dog results.
  • Name Shaper: your name's bouba/kiki score and shape, a sound-by-sound breakdown and name-vs-name pairs.
  • Sort Storm: a 60-second sorting arcade with three item types and two difficulties.
  • Sound Forge: a word-to-shape morpher, a creature lab and a made-up-name mill.
  • The Science: a timeline, explanations, caveats and a 12-question quiz.

How the scoring model works

Every word is split into sounds (with a few spelling rules, so "ch", "ck", "oo" and "ee" count as single sounds). Each sound has a weight:

  • Toward kiki: voiceless stops k, t, p (and hard c, q, x), hissy s, z, f, and bright, lips-spread vowels i, e, ee.
  • Toward bouba: the lip sounds b, m, w, the liquid l, nasal n, voiced g, d, and rounded vowels o, u, oo, ou.

The average weight is squashed onto a 0–100 scale. These choices follow the patterns the research keeps pointing to (stops vs. sonorants, front vs. rounded vowels), but the exact numbers are ours. The model reads spelling, not pronunciation, so it can't hear that the "c" in "Cecilia" is soft in some languages. Treat it as a toy, not a lab instrument.

In the Test, "in tune" means you picked the option this pattern predicts. Generated shapes go from smooth, lobed blobs (bouba) to sharp, straight-edged stars (kiki). Every word and shape is made fresh for each playthrough.

The human and dog comparison figures are published results from specific experiments. They used different stimuli and set-ups, so the comparison is for fun, not science.

Sources

  • IFLScience, "The words 'bouba' and 'kiki' have an odd effect on humans – a new study finds dogs experience it too" (Oct 2026): iflscience.com
  • Nautilus, "Even dogs seem to experience the mysterious bouba/kiki effect" (15 Oct 2026): nautil.us
  • ScienceAlert on Biffi et al., Proceedings of the Royal Society B (2026): sciencealert.com
  • NPR, "Baby chicks link certain sounds with shapes, just like humans do" (19 Feb 2026): via KPBS
  • Wikipedia, "Bouba/kiki effect": en.wikipedia.org
  • University of Birmingham, "Which shape is the bouba and which is the kiki?" (2021), on Ćwiek et al.: birmingham.ac.uk
  • Behavioral Scientist, "It's a Bouba, Not a Kiki" (2023): behavioralscientist.org
  • Futility Closet, "Sound and Sense", on Sapir's mil/mal experiment: futilitycloset.com
  • Kawahara et al., sound symbolism in Pokémon names: PMC
  • Hacker News discussion that put the dog study on the front page: news.ycombinator.com

Credits & privacy

Everything on this site was designed and written for it: the shape and word generators, the creatures, the games and the copy. Fonts are Fredoka, Chakra Petch and DM Sans from Google Fonts. Spoken words use your browser's built-in speech synthesis when it's available.

There's no tracking, no analytics and no accounts. Your theme, high scores and recent names are stored in your browser's localStorage and never leave your device.

This is a one-day site made for 19 October 2026. Its permanent home is dailyma.de/archive/2026-10-19.