How it works

Who can take part

• You must be 18 or over, and prize contests like this one must be lawful where you live. The contest is void where it is prohibited or restricted.
• One person, one account. You need a confirmed email address to play for points.
• Employees of the organiser and their immediate families cannot win a prize.

Season points

Points are the score. They cannot be bought, sold, transferred between players, or converted at any fixed rate. They exist to decide two things: where you sit on the leaderboard, and what fraction of the prize pool you receive.

There are exactly two ways to earn them.

1. Season puzzles

• A season has a fixed catalogue of puzzles, published on its season page. No more are ever added.
• You choose the difficulty, and with it the points at stake: either pick a puzzle on the season board, or choose a difficulty and we hand you an open puzzle of that difficulty. Every puzzle of the same difficulty in a season is worth the same, and you see the points before you start.
• You may start one season puzzle every 60 minutes. The clock starts when you reserve the puzzle, not when you finish it. Solving early, failing, leaving, or letting the reservation lapse does not shorten the wait.
• Once reserved, the puzzle is yours alone for 60 minutes. Nobody else can open it or see it. If you do not solve it in time, it returns to the pool for anyone.
• Solve it and it is claimed permanently: nobody can solve it again.

Each season page lists the points for each difficulty. By default they are 10, 15, 20 and 25.

2. The competition

• A new competition opens every 3 hours on a fixed global schedule, aligned to midnight UTC.
• Each round has three puzzles (Easy, Medium and Hard), identical for everyone and open to everyone at once.
• They are scored independently: 1, 2 and 3 points by default. Solve one, two or all three; there is no bonus for finishing all of them and no requirement to.
• You get one attempt at each per round. Failing one does not stop you playing the others.
• The competition is separate from the season puzzle wait. You can play it while you wait.

Hints and mistakes

Every competitive puzzle, season or competition, gives everyone exactly the same limits:

• 2 free hints. They cannot be bought, earned or extended, including by watching an advertisement.
• 3 mistakes. A wrong digit is a mistake; reaching the limit ends the puzzle with no points. There are no extra lives and no retries.

Neither limit applies in practice, which is unlimited on purpose and awards nothing.

Solo or team

You compete either as yourself or as one team of up to 10. A team is a single competitor: its members' points are pooled into one total and it takes one place on the leaderboard.

• You must choose before you can open a season or competition puzzle.
• Your choice locks when you first score, or earlier if you lock it yourself, and stays fixed for the season: you cannot then leave, switch teams, or move points.
• A team's roster closes the moment the team first scores, so nobody can join late to collect a share.
• Team points are never also counted as your solo points.
• A team's prize is split equally between its locked members, whatever each one contributed.

Fair play

Solve the puzzles yourself. Using a solver, bot, script or anyone else's answers, running more than one account, and letting someone else play your account are all prohibited.

• Solves that look automated have their points held. A person reviews every held case; software never makes the final decision.
• If a breach is confirmed, the points it produced are voided and the account is closed. You can appeal; the Fair Play policy explains how.
• On a team, points from a member's voided solves come off the team's total, and that member forfeits their own slice of the team's prize. Their teammates still receive their equal slices.

How the prize pool is divided

When a season ends we add up the eligible points of every competitor, solo players and teams alike, and divide the whole pool in proportion. Eligible points are confirmed points: not held for review and not voided.

So a point has no fixed cash value, and we never quote one. What we show you is your share of the points so far and what that share would currently be worth. Both move as other people score, and neither is final until the season settles. Amounts are rounded to the cent.

Getting paid

• A season is settled only after every held point has been reviewed. We aim to pay within 14 days of the season closing.
• Payouts go by PayPal. You need a confirmed email address, an account in good standing, and a saved payout destination.
• A share below $5.00 is not sent at settlement, because provider fees would consume it. It stays recorded on your account and is not forfeited. The same applies if your payout details are missing.
• We may need to verify your identity before paying, where the law requires it or fraud is suspected.
• You are responsible for any tax on what you receive.

Advertising

The site is paid for by advertising, which is why the contest can be free to enter. Advertisements appear in natural breaks, such as after a result or on the way back to the lobby, and never before or during a puzzle.

No advertisement can ever affect a competitive outcome. Watching one cannot give you points, a hint, an extra mistake, a retry, a shorter wait or another attempt. Your result is recorded before any advertisement is shown.

Viewing, finishing or loading an advertisement is never a condition of entering, scoring, being paid, or opening your next puzzle. If an advertisement asks you to wait a few seconds, the rest of the site is still one click away, and you lose nothing if it fails to load or you leave it.