The rules in full
The board is a four-by-four grid of sixteen single digits, each between 1 and 9, with one target total above it. You win by selecting exactly four tiles that form a connected chain and add up to that target. Connected means each tile shares a full edge with the one before it, so a corner tile has two legal neighbours, an edge tile has three, and a tile in the middle has four. No tile can be used twice, so every valid answer covers four distinct squares. You have three attempts before a solution is revealed.
How to play, step by step
Read the target before you touch anything, because knowing whether you need a high or a low total changes which part of the board is worth reading first. Tap any tile to begin, since there is no fixed starting square. From then on only legal tiles stay tappable and the rest are disabled, so you cannot build an invalid chain even by accident. The running total sits under the board and updates as you go. Once four tiles are selected, submit the chain. Tapping your most recent tile again removes just that step, which is faster than clearing the whole chain and starting over.
How today's board is made
The board is not random from your point of view. Today's date is turned into a number and used to seed a deterministic generator, so every player in the world derives the same sixteen digits and the same target from the date alone. Nothing is downloaded and nothing is stored on a server, which is also why the puzzle still works offline. The day rolls over at midnight UTC rather than at your local midnight, which is why the countdown under the grid may not line up with your own clock. Each of the sixteen tiles is drawn independently, which is why duplicates are common and why some boards look lopsided.
Why there is always an answer
The target is not chosen and then matched against the board. The generator first walks a connected path of four tiles across the grid, then adds those four numbers together and publishes the result as the target. The answer therefore exists before the puzzle is ever shown, and there can never be a day where the grid is unsolvable. One consequence is worth knowing: the game compares your total against the target, not your path against the one it walked. On many boards more than one chain reaches the same total, so a correct answer of yours can legitimately differ from the solution revealed at the end.
Attempts, timing and streaks
You get three attempts. After the third incorrect total the grid reveals a valid solution and the day is closed, so a board cannot be replayed. The timer starts when you tap your first tile rather than when the page loads, which means you can study the board for as long as you like at no cost. Recorded times are floored at one second. A streak grows by one only when your previous win was the immediately preceding day, so winning again after skipping a day restarts the streak at one, and a loss returns it to zero. Streaks, wins and best times are held in your own browser with no account, so clearing site data or moving to another device starts you fresh.
Strategy the generator gives away
Because digits are drawn independently from 1 to 9, the average tile is 5 and the average four-tile total is close to 20. Targets far from 20 are therefore far more constrained than they look: a target of 9 or below almost always needs the smallest cluster on the board, and 30 or above almost always needs the largest. Work backwards from the two biggest adjacent digits you can see and ask what the remaining pair must contribute. After a miss, use the exact difference rather than guessing again, because being told you were four over usually means swapping one tile rather than rebuilding the chain. Finally, remember what shapes a four-tile walk can take: a straight line, an L bend, an S or Z kink, and a two-by-two square block. The square block is legal, and most players never look for it.
A worked example
Suppose the target is 24 and the top-left corner of the board reads 9 and 7 side by side, with 3 and 5 directly beneath them. Chaining 9, 7, then down to 5 and left to 3 gives 24 and wins, and that chain is a two-by-two square rather than a line. Now suppose you had instead tried 9, 7, 6, 4 along the top row for 26. The game reports that you are two above the target, which is the most useful information you will get all game: you do not need a new chain, you need to replace one tile with another that is two smaller. Swapping the 6 for a 4, or the 4 for a 2, closes the gap in a single move.
Common mistakes
The rule most new players break is moving diagonally, which is never legal here. The second is hunting only for straight lines and missing bends and square blocks entirely. The third is clearing the entire chain after a wrong answer instead of undoing one tile and adjusting. The fourth is ignoring the difference message and submitting an unrelated guess, which wastes one of only three attempts. The last is assuming the revealed solution was the only answer, when on most boards several chains reach the same total.
Accessibility
The grid is marked up as a real grid, so screen readers announce it as a table of cells rather than a row of buttons. Each tile announces its value, its position in your chain if selected, and whether it is a legal next move, so the highlighting is never the only way to know where you can go. Tiles that are not legal are genuinely disabled rather than only dimmed, which means keyboard and switch users skip past them instead of testing each one. The running total and the feedback line are live regions, so changes are read out without moving focus. Every control meets the minimum touch target size, and the interface honours a system request for reduced motion.
Common questions
- Can I move diagonally?
- No. Only up, down, left and right count as connected, and this is the single most common misunderstanding when players start.
- How many attempts do I get?
- Three. After the third incorrect total a valid solution is revealed.
- Is every board solvable?
- Yes. The target is calculated from a real chain found on the board before the puzzle is published, so an answer always exists.
- Is there only one correct answer?
- Often not. The game checks your total against the target, so any connected chain of four tiles that reaches it is accepted.
- When does the puzzle change?
- At midnight UTC. The countdown under the grid shows exactly how long today's board has left.
- Do I need an account?
- No. There is no sign-in, no email and no download. Progress is saved in your browser only.
- What happens to my streak if I clear my browser data?
- It resets, because nothing is stored on a server. That is the trade-off for not asking you to create an account.