The recipe, step by step
The engine does four things to your two names, in order. One: it lowercases everything and keeps only the letters a–z — capitals, spaces, hyphens and emoji never reach the math. Two: it sorts the two names alphabetically and joins them, so Alex&Sam and Sam&Alex produce the identical signature. Three: it builds a number from that signature — a sum of every character code, a count of every l, o, v and e hiding in the pair, and a fingerprint hash that spreads near-identical names apart. Four: it takes the final number modulo 101, landing somewhere between 0 and 100.
Why spelling changes everything
Because the engine reads letters only, Katie and Kate are different inputs, and a silent "e" can genuinely buy a few points — that's the love-letter bonus doing its job. It's also why nicknames are a legitimate strategy: if your crush goes by a shorter name, test both spellings and keep the better story. That's not cheating; that's the meta.
What the engine ignores
Order, capitals, spaces, punctuation, emoji and accents all get stripped or neutralized before the math starts. The calculator doesn't know anything about you beyond twenty-something letters, and that's by design — a black box with no inputs is just a dice roll with extra steps. The table above lists every input feature and exactly what it does to your score.
