How to play
Eleven answers, all about football. Everyone gets the same puzzle each day.
The score
A league season is 38 games. Win all 38 and you finish on 114 — a perfect season, which nobody has ever had. Nineteen of the last thirty title winners took fewer than 90, so anything in the eighties is a very good day.
The clock
The clock counts in match minutes, not real ones. A minute passes every 20 seconds, so the full 90 takes half an hour. Your score is whatever the clock has left — nothing else takes points off it.
It drops fastest early and levels off, so finishing late still gets you a result. At 90’ it stops falling altogether — take as long as you like after that, though the day counts as a draw once the whistle has gone.
The help buttons
All four are there whenever you want them. They cost time. Asking for help moves the clock forward, and the clock is what your score is made of.
| Button | What it does | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Check word | Marks which letters of this answer are wrong | +2′ |
| Check grid | Marks every wrong letter on the board | +10′ |
| Reveal letter | Fills in the square you are on | +3′ · 1 sub |
| Reveal answer | Fills in the whole answer | +14′ · 3 subs |
There is no penalty for a wrong guess. Typing something and changing your mind is free. Only asking the game costs you.
Checking never costs a substitution, so verifying your own work can never turn a win into a draw. Help late is riskier than help early: reveal an answer at 45’ and you are fine, but take three letters at 82’ and the whistle goes before you finish.
Marks stay put until you edit that square, so you can come back to a word later and still see what was wrong.
Substitutions
A revealed letter uses one. A revealed answer uses all three.
Spending all three is fine. Going past them is not: ask for a fourth letter, or an answer when you only have two left, and the day becomes a draw however well you finish. You will be warned before it happens.
Win, draw or lose
Every board is a match, and every match is one of three results.
| Win | Solved before full time, without going past your three substitutions | 3 pts |
| Draw | Solved, but you ran out of substitutions or the whistle went first | 1 pt |
| Loss | Started and did not finish it | 0 |
Missing a day is not a loss. It ends your run, and that is all — the table is about how you play, the run is about turning up.
Yesterday’s board still counts — for the run and the record — if you finish it before the end of today. Anything older is a friendly against the past: you get your score and your Full Time, but it does not bank a matchday or extend a run. Once a board is more than a week old its answers are published, so an old score could never be trusted anyway.
Your record
Thirty-eight matches make a season, the same as a league. Your results build a table, and where you finish is measured against a real season — champions, Europe, mid-table, relegated.
Miss a board and you can play it later from Previous puzzles: every daily since the start is there, and one more arrives every day.