The Daily Puzzle

Once a day, one board. It is a 7×7, drawn at the hardest setting the game has, and it is the same board for every player in the world.

One board, named by its date

The daily is generated from the date itself, so the board for a given day is identical on every phone and tablet, with no server involved. It is named by its date rather than a level number, and it can be played once. When you have solved it, its card counts down to the next one, which arrives when the date changes on your device.

The daily is open from the start. The ladder of levels runs alongside it, teaching the rule at increasing sizes, so the 7×7 daily is the most challenging board on offer any given day.

The week has a shape

The daily's rocks follow a weekly rhythm rather than a roll of the dice, so a returning player can feel the week go by:

Rocks are blocked cells the line must flow around; the board is complete when everything that isn't a rock is filled. The heavier boards sit where the weekend does. See how to play for the rule and strategy for how to read them.

Streaks

Solving a board on consecutive days builds a streak, a level counting as much as the daily, and the game keeps your best. The streak screen shows the current week as seven circles, and the seventh circle is drawn as a gift box, because that is what the seventh straight day earns: a box for the window-sill garden. Miss a day entirely and the streak starts over from one, but the best run stays on record.

Par and pace

The daily is the one board that keeps time. When you finish, the celebration card shows a par time for that day's board and a verdict on how your solve compared. The par is worked out from the board itself, so a heavy Sunday has a slower par than a clear Wednesday. Nothing rushes you while you play; the time is simply written down at the end. A solve that used a hint is marked as such, and its verdict is set aside.

Once the league has opened, the daily is also the best-paid board of the day: a daily solve banks half again as many league points as a level of the same pace.

Sharing a solve

A finished daily can be shared as a line of text: the game's name, the date, your time, where it stood in the field, the hints and backtracks it took, your streak, and a link back to the game. Levels read the same way, named by their number. Friends who play the same day get the same board, and since every board has exactly one solution, their drawn lines will match; what differs is the time, and how clean the solve was.

The daily and the ladder

The daily is one board a day by design. For more than one puzzle a day there is the level ladder, which never ends and is always open, with the same rule at every size from 4×4 up to 7×7, plus rocks and walls as it climbs. Many players do the daily first and then take a level or two; the ladder is where the practice happens and the daily is where it shows.