The answer to today’s Contexto (#1403) is DRAIN.
If you are still working through it and want a nudge before the full reveal, three hints are below before the spoiler.
Hints for Contexto #1403 (July 22, 2026)
- Hint 1: Where water goes when it disappears from sight.
- Hint 2: Think pipes, plugs, and plumbing.
- Hint 3: Your energy and your bathtub share this fate.
Contexto #1403 Answer:
DRAIN
DRAIN traces back to Old English drehnian, meaning to filter or strain, and that root still shows up in both of the word’s modern lives. In its literal form, it is the channel or pipe that carries water away: the kitchen drain, the shower drain, the storm drain at the curb edge. As a verb, it means to empty gradually, whether a bathtub, a bank account, or a person pushed past their limit.
That double identity is what makes DRAIN a punishing Contexto pick. The game’s AI model ranks each guess by how comprehensively it overlaps with the secret word’s full semantic neighborhood, not just the most obvious reference, but every context the word inhabits across a large language corpus. DRAIN anchors two distinct clusters at once, and players who lock onto one tend to stall before crossing to the other. A similar dual-register problem turned up in our Contexto #1398 solution for ICON (July 17), where the figurative and literal senses pulled solvers apart in the same way.
Players approaching from the plumbing angle usually hit PIPE, SINK, FAUCET, PLUG, and GUTTER early, all landing comfortably in the green zone (top 300 by rank). The figurative cluster sits in a different part of semantic space: EXHAUST, DEPLETE, SAP, FATIGUE, SIPHON. Getting below rank 50 reliably requires working both sides of the meaning.
Yesterday’s puzzle was #1402 (ACTOR). The most recent solution in our archive before today is the Contexto #1401 answer for July 20, 2026 (CELERY).
