How to Play

🧩What is DailyGrid?

DailyGrid is ten fresh puzzles every day — cryptograms, word ladders, mini crosswords, word searches, sudoku, kakuro, nonograms, slitherlink, hashi, and minesweeper — all in one place.

• The daily puzzles are free. Always. No paywall, no account, no locked daily games.
• No account needed. No signup, no email, no password. Your progress is tied to an anonymous ID on your device, so you start playing in one tap.
• New puzzles daily. A fresh set drops every night at midnight Eastern Time. The clock in the top bar shows your local time, so you always know when the next set lands.
• Past days playable. Use the date selector on the homepage to revisit recent days — archive solves count toward that day's boards and league standings, just like playing on the day itself.
• A weekly difficulty rhythm. Mondays and Tuesdays ease you in, Wednesdays and Thursdays step up, and Friday through Sunday bring the hardest sets of the week — the same rhythm across all ten games.
• No repeats, ever. Every day's puzzles are fingerprint-checked against our entire published archive before they go live, so regulars never see the same puzzle twice.

🎮The 10 games

Each game drops once per day. Here they are:

Six of the ten are pure number-and-logic games — they have their own shelf at Daily Logic Puzzles.

• 🔐CipherCrack the secret code — a daily cryptogram. Click a cipher letter, then assign the plain letter you think it stands for.
• 🪜LadderClimb from word to word — change one letter at a time to transform the start word into the end word. Fewer steps is better.
• ✏️Mini CrosswordThe 5×5 crossword — a compact grid with quick clues. Great with morning coffee.
• 🔍Word SearchFind the hidden words in the letter grid. Drag or tap across letters to claim them.
• 🔢GridClassic Sudoku — fill every row, column, and 3×3 box with 1–9, no repeats.
• ➕KakuroCross-sums, no repeats — fill the white cells so each run adds up to its clue, without repeating a digit in any run.
• 🖼️PixelPaint by number clues — a nonogram. Fill cells based on the row and column numbers to reveal the hidden picture.
• ➰SlitherlinkDraw one single loop — connect dots so the loop's edges match the numbers in each cell. One continuous loop, no branches.
• 🌉HashiBridge every island — connect numbered islands with bridges so each island has exactly its number of bridges, and everything connects.
• 💣MinesweeperClear without the boom — reveal every safe cell using the number clues. Flag the mines, don't click them.

⚡Game variations

Want a different challenge? Each game has remix modes — look for the chips under a game card (like ⚡ Blitz or 🚫 No Hints):

• ⚡ Blitz / Sprint — timed versions. Race the clock; if time runs out, the attempt doesn't count as a win.
• 🚫 No Hints — no letter-frequency hints on Cipher. Pure deduction.
• 🎯 Par Attack — on Ladder, you must solve in par steps or fewer.
• 🔬 Mini — smaller grids (e.g. a 5×5 Pixel instead of 10×10). Quicker and snappier.
• ✏️ No Pencil — on Kakuro, no note-taking allowed. For the confident.

Variations are tracked separately from the main daily game — they don't affect your streak, and they feed the same skill rating as their base game.

⚡Rush mode

Tap the ⚡ Rush Mode card at the top of the home page for a 3-minute speed run:

• 3:00 on the clock — solve as many puzzles as you can before time runs out.
• Auto-advance — each solve jumps you to the next game automatically. No tapping around.
• All 10 games — shuffled every run, so no two rushes are the same.
• Personal best — your best score for today is saved. Beat it.

Rush is pure speed — it doesn't affect your daily streak, ratings, or leaderboards. It's just you vs. the clock.

★Skill ratings

Every game has its own skill rating, shown as ★ under the game card. It works like a chess rating:

• Everyone starts at 800 in every game.
• Solve faster than par and your rating climbs — the faster you beat the expected time, the bigger the jump (up to +32 per solve).
• Finishing slower than par still earns a small completion bonus.
• Failing (running out of time on a timed variant, for example) costs rating points, but never below 100.
• Ratings reset never — they track your improvement over time. Check your rating history on the stats page to see your trend.

🏆Leaderboards

Each game has a daily leaderboard: the fastest solvers of the day, resetting at midnight ET. Someone posts a faster time and you get bumped — next morning, everyone starts over.

• You're on by default. Every solve posts to that game's board under a generated display name (like Player 4821) — no setup needed. Want your own name? Open Leaderboards (🏆) → Leaderboard settings and claim one (3–20 characters, letters, digits, and spaces).
• Your best time of the day counts — one entry per person per game per day.
• Privacy-first. Only your display name and time show up. No real names, no accounts. Prefer to stay hidden? Opt out anytime in Leaderboard settings and all your entries are deleted.
• Keep it friendly. Names are checked when you claim one, and if you ever see a name that doesn't belong on a family-friendly board, tap the ⚑ next to it — it hides right away while we review it.
• Share your rank. On any board where you've posted a time, tap "Share my rank" to send a card with your position, time, and a challenge link — whoever opens it lands on the same puzzle with your time to beat.

👥Leagues & playing with friends

Leaderboards are public; leagues are your private group — family, coworkers, a group chat. One shared link is the whole league.

• Create one in Leaderboards (🏆) → "My Leagues" → Create a league, then send the invite link to your group. Anyone who opens it joins instantly — no accounts, no signups.
• Standings reset daily and rank by games solved first, then total time — so a full clear beats a fast partial. Only members can see a league's standings.
• Up to 50 players per league. Leave anytime; if the creator leaves, the league plays on.

Seasons: the daily board is just the start. Every league also keeps cumulative season standings — Week, Month, and All-time tabs that never wipe. Solves earn 10 points each, plus a speed bonus (the fastest player on a puzzle earns up to +5 extra), and the season leader wears the 👑. Your whole history counts, so a long-running league becomes a season-long rivalry — not a scoreboard that forgets you every midnight.

Invite friends, get the glory: the same Leaderboards panel has your personal invite link. Friends who join through it are counted there, with milestone badges as your crew grows (Supporter → Founding Player → Puzzle Ambassador). And when you share a day card, it carries your league or invite link — every flex recruits.

More of a community person? DailyGrid has a Discord server — and the DailyGrid bot is live: type /dailygrid in any server for today's ten puzzle links, and server admins can run /setdaily to have them posted automatically every morning at 7 AM ET.

Run a website or a newsletter? You can put a DailyGrid puzzle on your own page with a free embed — your readers play today's puzzle without leaving your site.

🌐Play in Spanish (Español)

Tap the 🌐 Español button at the bottom of the page to switch the whole site to Spanish — menus, buttons, instructions, and game text — and back to English the same way, anytime. The six number and logic games (Sudoku, Kakuro, Pixel, Slitherlink, Hashi, Minesweeper) play fully in Spanish. The four word games keep their English puzzle content for now — the words themselves are the puzzle — while everything around them is translated. Prefer to start in Spanish? Head to nuestra página en español.

🔥Streaks

The 🔥 number in the top bar is your streak: consecutive days you solved at least one game.

• Just one game a day keeps your streak alive — low pressure, daily habit.
• A "Perfect day" is solving all games in a single day — a separate badge for completionists.
• The day resets at midnight Eastern Time, all year round (DST-safe).
• Every solved game is saved and counts toward your per-game stats.

📤Sharing

After you win a game, hit Share to copy a spoiler-free emoji card — Wordle-style. It shows your solve, your time, and your streak, never the answers. Paste it anywhere: X, Discord, texts.

Share day sends a picture card of your whole day: all ten games, your total time, and a challenge line ("3/10 in 8:17 — beat me"). Clear all ten and the card turns gold — the Perfect Day flex. The link on the card points to your league or your personal invite link, so a good day doubles as a recruitment post.

Sharing a single game also adds a ⚔️ challenge link carrying your time. Whoever opens it plays that exact puzzle — today's or any past day's — under a "beat my time" banner, sees the head-to-head result, and can challenge you right back by sharing theirs.

After every solve, the panel under your win banner pulls it all together: your time, streak and progress (say, 4/10), a one-tap ⚔️ Challenge a friend button carrying that game's time, a 📋 Share my day text grid (green squares for solved games, your total time — paste it anywhere), an optional 🔔 7 AM reminder opt-in, and a next puzzle suggestion that walks you up the difficulty ladder. Finish all ten and the panel celebrates your Perfect Day — the share grid turns all-green with the 🏆 marker.

🏫For classrooms & libraries

Teachers and librarians use DailyGrid as a no-setup morning warm-up: no accounts, no student data, works on Chromebooks, and the weekday difficulty rotation plans the week for you. The classrooms & libraries page has the warm-up routine, a game-to-skill guide for all ten games, and the embed option for school and library websites.

❓FAQ

Do I need an account?

No. Everything works with an anonymous device ID. No signup, no email, no password.

Does it cost anything?

No. The daily puzzles are free. Always — no paywall, no account, no locked daily games.

When do new puzzles come out?

Every night at midnight Eastern Time.

Can I play on my phone?

Yes — DailyGrid is a progressive web app. On Android, look for the install prompt; on iPhone, use Safari's Share → Add to Home Screen for the full app experience with push reminders.

What does "👥 N playing today" mean?

An anonymous headcount of how many people are playing today. No names or personal data behind it.

What's the 🌙/☀️ button?

Light mode / dark mode. Dark is the default; your choice is remembered.

How do push reminders work?

Tap the 🔔 button to get a daily "puzzles are ready" nudge. On iPhone, push requires the Home Screen app version. Turn reminders off anytime.

Can I get the puzzles by email instead?

Yes — join the free daily email with the signup form at the bottom of this page (and most of our other pages). One short email each morning with the day's puzzles; unsubscribe anytime.

Will I ever see the same puzzle twice?

No. Every new day is checked against everything we've ever published before it goes live. Miss a day? Past sets stay playable from the date selector — they never rotate back in as "new".

Does DailyGrid work in Spanish?

Sí. Tap 🌐 Español at the bottom of the page — the site and the six number/logic games switch fully; word-game content stays English for now (see the Spanish section above).

Something's wrong — how do I report it?

Email hello@getdailygrid.com with the date and the game name.