How To Play

Each league has one mystery player per day. The Champions League, Premier League and La Liga puzzles are separate, so you can play one, two or all three. Everyone in the world gets the same player for the same league on the same day, and every puzzle resets at midnight UTC.

You have 10 guesses. Start typing a player name, pick one from the list, and the board compares your guess with the hidden answer across every clue column at once: five in the Champions League, and six in the Premier League and La Liga, which add a Region column. Only players in that league's current squad list can be guessed, so a name that does not appear in the dropdown is not the answer.

Your guesses are kept in your own browser. There is no account and nothing to sign up for, which also means clearing your browser data clears your streak.

Every row is a previous guess. Each column tells you how one part of that player compares with the mystery player.

On Age and Shirt Number, any miss also carries an arrow. Up means the mystery player is older, or wears a higher number, than the one you guessed. Down means the opposite. The arrow shows on yellow and dark cells alike, so even a badly wrong age halves the field.

The exact thresholds for every clue are set out in the clue guide, along with how much each colour actually narrows the pool.

Pick a player you know well rather than a random name. The best opening guess is an ordinary one: a mid-twenties player, at a mid-table club, from a country that is well represented in the league. Extremes waste a turn. Guessing a 38-year-old goalkeeper tells you little except that the answer is probably not a 38-year-old goalkeeper.

How much the country clue is worth depends on the league, and the gap is large. Only 10 percent of the Champions League pool shares its commonest nationality, and 32 percent of the Premier League pool is English, so in both a country guess cuts the field hard. La Liga is 60 percent Spanish, which means guessing a Spanish player there usually returns green and tells you almost nothing. In La Liga, open on age or shirt number instead, where every miss now points you in a direction.

After the first guess, stop guessing the same kind of player unless the feedback sends you there. If country is yellow, stay on that continent and change nation. If position is yellow, move one line up or down the pitch. If club is yellow, use the league-specific rule below to work out which clubs are still live.

• Champions League. The pool spans every country in the competition. A yellow club clue means the guessed player's club plays in the same domestic country as the mystery player's club, so a yellow on a Bayern guess points at the Bundesliga.
• Premier League. One country, so club proximity is geographic instead. A yellow club clue means the two clubs sit in the same region of England, and a separate Region column names that region outright.
• La Liga. Same region rule as the Premier League, drawn on Spanish lines: Catalonia, Madrid, Andalusia, Valencia, Basque & Navarra, and Northwest & Islands.

Three dailies is about five minutes. Two other modes have no daily limit at all.

• Endless. The same board and the same rules, one player after another, for as long as you want. Every league has its own endless mode, and playing it never puts your daily streak at risk.
• Name the Club. A different question: five players from one squad, four clubs, pick the right one. A run continues until your first wrong answer.

Every answer is drawn from a real registered squad. The lists are rebuilt from public squad data rather than written by hand, which is why the pool changes when clubs do. You can browse the same lists the puzzles draw from: every club squad and every country has its own page.

Because the pool is the current squad list, a player who has just moved clubs can appear under a new club before you expect it, and a player who has left the league disappears entirely.