Wordle is similar though and doesn't seem to suffer from this ambiguity. Is it because the ui feedback from Wordle makes it more clear you're guessing the same word? I thought it was pretty clear here with the distance.
This game reminds me very much of chronophoto (https://www.chronophoto.app/game.html), which prompts with photos from different years, and so I was expecting it to work more like that.