In 成语接龙, the idiom chain game, each player answers with a four-character idiom that begins with the last character of the one before: 一针见血 can be followed by 血气方刚, then 刚柔相济, and so on until someone is stuck. The chain does not have to be long: answer 一针见血 with 血海深仇 instead, and the game is already over, because no idiom begins with 仇. Some idioms leave the next player nothing to say at all. 掩耳盗铃 ("covering your ears to steal a bell") is one, because no idiom begins with 铃. So is 自相矛盾, "self-contradictory": nothing begins with 盾.
Those are the idioms players hunt for. This guide counts them across a list of 29,502 four-character idioms, finds the ones that trap a player two moves ahead, and shows how much the answer depends on the house rules and the list being played with. You can play the game against our idiom chain game.
The idioms that end the game
The list used here is an openly licensed idiom collection compiled from dictionary sources, with 29,502 entries of exactly four characters. Under the strictest rule — the next idiom must start with the same character — 3,183 of them, 10.8%, end the game on the spot: no idiom in the list begins with their last character.
A few final characters account for many of them.
| Last character | Idioms ending with it | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| 迹 | 57 | 不拘形迹, 闭门扫迹 |
| 戈 | 29 | 大动干戈, 被甲枕戈 |
| 测 | 28 | 变幻莫测, 高深莫测 |
| 髓 | 25 | 病入骨髓, 恨入骨髓 |
| 状 | 24 | 不可名状, 安于现状 |
| 已 | 23 | 不能自已, 逼不得已 |
Idioms passed around as famous dead ends do not all survive a check. 迫在眉睫 does end the game, as its reputation says: nothing starts with 睫. 南辕北辙 is often quoted too, but in this list two idioms begin with 辙, among them 辙乱旗靡, so an opponent with a large vocabulary can answer it. And 一个顶俩, perhaps the best-known "unanswerable" idiom of all, is not in this dictionary list in the first place, so a strict referee could refuse it before anyone had to reply.
Traps two moves ahead
A dead end ends the game when you play it. A trap ends it one turn later: an idiom that does have answers, but every one of them is itself a dead end. Whoever answers it has to hand you the game.
Take 抱头鼠窜 ("to scurry away like a rat"). Exactly one idiom starts with its last character, 窜: 窜端匿迹. That reply ends in 迹, which begins no other idiom. Play 抱头鼠窜, and your opponent's only move is to play a dead end. 安坐待毙 works the same way: its only reply, 毙而后已, ends in 已.
These are much rarer than dead ends. In the full list, 191 idioms, 0.6%, are traps of this kind. Their final characters cluster as the dead ends do: 味, 藉, 弟, 邦, 窜 and 羹 lead the list.
The opposite end of the table is where a careful player aims to leave an opponent. 600 idioms begin with 一 and 538 with 不, so an idiom ending in either gives the next player hundreds of choices. Ending on 迹 gives them none.
The house rule decides the game
Many players accept an idiom that starts with the same sound, not only the same character, and that one change almost removes dead ends altogether. Counted again over the same list, using each idiom's pinyin (the 29,497 idioms whose pinyin divides cleanly into four syllables):
| Rule for the next idiom | Idioms that end the game |
|---|---|
| Same character | 10.8% |
| Same syllable and same tone | 1.21% |
| Same syllable, any tone | 0.14% |
Under the loosest rule only 40 of those 29,497 idioms end the game. So the rules agreed at the start decide far more than any vocabulary: a hunt for dead ends is a same-character game, and under the sound rule there is very little to hunt.
A smaller list plays a harder game
The list matters as much as the rule. The idiom list behind our own game holds 5,046 idioms, the ones common enough for a quick game. Measured the same way, 27.3% of its idioms end the game, against 10.8% in the full list, and 5.2% are two-move traps, against 0.6%.
A smaller list has more dead ends simply because fewer idioms are available to start with any given character. 南辕北辙, which can be answered in the full list, is a dead end in the smaller one, because neither idiom starting with 辙 is common enough to be included. 掩耳盗铃 and 迫在眉睫 end the game in both. A player whose opponent is limited to common idioms can win far more often by steering towards the dead ends.
Our game accepts only idioms on its own list. Until September 2026 it told a player whose idiom was missing from the list to try "a real idiom", when most idioms missing from it are perfectly real; it now says the idiom is not on the game's list.
Simplified and traditional characters play differently
The list here is in simplified characters, but the game plays differently in traditional script, because simplification merged some characters that were once distinct. Converting the whole list to traditional characters, using the standard conversion for Taiwan, 64 idioms that can be answered in simplified script become dead ends, and 16 go the other way.
The examples show why. 步步高升 ("rising step by step") becomes 步步高昇 in Taiwanese usage, and no idiom starts with 昇. 不知所云 keeps 云, but every idiom that starts with 云 in simplified script, such as 云开见日, becomes 雲 in traditional script, so 不知所云 loses all its answers. A converted list is only an approximation of an idiom dictionary compiled in Taiwan or Hong Kong, but the mechanism is general: the same idiom can end a game in one script and not in the other.
How the counting was done
The idiom list is an openly licensed collection of 30,895 entries compiled from dictionary sources, of which the 29,502 with exactly four Chinese characters were used. For each idiom, the count checked whether any idiom in the same list begins with its last character, by character or by pinyin syllable as stated. A trap is an idiom with at least one answer, all of whose answers are dead ends. The traditional-script figures convert every idiom with a standard open-source converter and recount. Our game's figures use its own list of 5,046 idioms. All counts were made on 21 September 2026. A different list, especially a larger or smaller one, gives different figures; that dependence is the point of the section above.
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