Three new puzzles every month, getting harder in order: Medium, Hard, Expert. Everyone who arrives that month solves the same three. The month is the seed, so nothing is fetched from a server — your browser builds them on the spot.
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Standings
The players you race are generated by this browser. They are not real people's records.
Past tournaments
Tournament
The players you race are not real
This site ships static files only. There is no server collecting scores, so there is no way to fetch anyone else's. The 99 players you race are generated by this browser on the spot. They are not real people's records.
Made up, but not arbitrary. Each player gets a rate — puzzles solved per hour — and a skill — points per puzzle — drawn from a normal distribution, tuned so that the top 1% solves about one puzzle an hour. Between 20% and 40% never turn up at all. The month is the seed, so the same field runs all month, and their scores only rise as time passes.
Your score comes from every puzzle you finish this month
The three featured puzzles are not the only ones that count. Every puzzle you finish during the month adds to that month's score. Harder puzzles carry a bigger multiplier — from 1× on Easy to 5× on Expert.
Your score and times live in this browser only. They won't show up on your other devices, and clearing site data clears them. Last month's puzzles don't disappear, so arriving late costs you nothing.
What order to solve them in
Start at the first and go in order. Solving the hard one first teaches you nothing that helps with the easy one, but the reverse does — once your hand is used to writing candidates in puzzle 1, the time you spend managing notes in puzzle 3 drops noticeably.
Puzzle 3 (Expert) may be one the thirteen techniques can't finish. When that happens the hint says so plainly — that a deeper method is needed from here — and gives you one cell. Being stuck there isn't something you failed to see; the puzzle genuinely asks for more.
The time goes into looking, not typing
Watch the clock and you'll see that entering digits takes almost none of it. Nearly all of it is scanning the grid because you don't know where to look next. Three things cut that down.
- Turn on Auto notes in settings. Writing and erasing candidates by hand disappears entirely. They're recomputed after every move, so you never erase the same one twice.
- Turn on Quick entry. You pick a digit first and then just tap cells. Putting the same digit in several places no longer means travelling between the grid and the number pad.
- Pick one digit and sweep the grid with it. Instead of looking anywhere, work through 1 to 9 asking only where that digit can go. A regular path over the grid is a path that misses less.
You get three hints per puzzle, and each one costs score. Pressing one to save time lowers the clock and the score together, and once the three are gone there are no more until a new game or a restart.