# Fuzziness with best\_fields query not working as expected

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/fuzziness-with-best-fields-query-not-working-as-expected/231803>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [May 8, 2020, 9:25pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/fuzziness-with-best-fields-query-not-working-as-expected/231803 "2020-05-08T21:25:20Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![gideongrossman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/898d66/32.png) [@gideongrossman](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/gideongrossman)\
**Post date:** [May 8, 2020, 9:25pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/fuzziness-with-best-fields-query-not-working-as-expected/231803/1 "2020-05-08T21:25:20Z")

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I am running a multimatch best\_fields query and the fuzziness parameter is not operating as I expect. I am using a very small simple index to test. The index contains two documents.

```
 {
    "_index": "contacts_4",
    "_type": "_doc",
    "_id": "1",
    "_score": 1.0,
    "_source": {
      "full_name": "Christopher Cleveland"
    }
  },
  {
    "_index": "contacts_4",
    "_type": "_doc",
    "_id": "2",
    "_score": 1.0,
    "_source": {
      "full_name": "Chris Cleveland"
    }
  }

```

What I want to happen is for the search term "Chris" to bring back both "Chris Cleveland" _and_ "Christopher Cleveland" in that order.

Here is the structure of my query...  
{  
"query": {  
"multi\_match": {  
"query": "Chr",  
"type": "best\_fields",  
"fields": [  
"full\_name"  
],  
"fuzziness": 6  
}  
}  
}

If I search for "Chr", "Chris", "Christ", "Christo", then as expected, elastic returns the document with full\_name = "Chris Cleveland". This is good. But When I search for "Christop", there are no results. Considering I set the fuzziness parameter to 6, shouldn't elastic match any documents with a full\_name value that only requires 6 levenstein steps? and isn't adding or removing x characters considered 6 steps? For completeness, I should add that if I search for "Christoph", "Christophe" or "Christopher", elastic returns the document with full\_name = "Christopher Cleveland".

What am I missing about how fuzziness or elastic works?  
Cheers

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [June 5, 2020, 9:25pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/fuzziness-with-best-fields-query-not-working-as-expected/231803/2 "2020-06-05T21:25:22Z")

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