student asking question

What's the different between "got to guess" and "guess" here? It seems pretty much the same for me.

teacher

Native speaker’s answer

Rebecca

"Gotta" or "got to" here means "have to". So in this case "I gotta guess" means "I have to guess". He is says this instead of just simply "guess" here most likely because he thinks it is the most reasonable thing to guess, and so he has to go with that guess out of other options. Ex: I've got to guess it was the dog that ate our food. It's the only thing that makes sense!

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