One rating, seven tiers, earned in tournaments and duels against real opponents.
Every player starts at 1200. Ratings move on an Elo-style system adapted for puzzle solving: instead of a flat win or loss, your result is scored against the difficulty of what you solved and how completely you solved it, then damped by difficulty, so that once you are rated above an Easy field's anchor, farming Easy events stops moving your rating the way a strong performance on a Hard one does.
Newer players carry a larger K-factor, so their rating converges on their true strength within a handful of events instead of creeping there over months. Once you have a record, the K-factor drops and your rating becomes correspondingly harder to move. Changes are normalised to be zero-sum across an event, so rating is transferred between players rather than created. The scale runs from a floor of 800 to a ceiling of 3000.
Your tier is derived from your current rating and is shown as a badge next to your name everywhere on the site.
| Tier | Rating |
|---|---|
| Super Grandmaster | 2700+ |
| Grandmaster | 2500 – 2699 |
| Master | 2200 – 2499 |
| Expert | 1900 – 2199 |
| Advanced | 1600 – 1899 |
| Intermediate | 1300 – 1599 |
| Beginner | 0 – 1299 |
Because everyone begins at 1200, a new account starts in Beginner and climbs into Intermediate at 1300 on results alone.
Rated play means tournaments and duels. Tournaments award points for difficulty and speed, with partial credit for an unfinished grid, and settle everyone's rating together when the event finalises. Duels are head-to-head: same puzzle, same clock, and the rating swing accounts for how close the finish was rather than treating a two-second win like a walkover.
Classic play, training and daily practice are deliberately unrated — they are where you learn without anything at stake. Guests can play and duel, but guest results do not carry a rating.
Every account starts at 1200, which sits in the Beginner tier — Intermediate begins at 1300. Ratings are bounded between 800 and 3000.
Play rated events — tournaments and duels. Solving harder puzzles and finishing faster both raise your score, and beating higher-rated opponents moves your rating further than beating lower-rated ones.
No. Daily challenges, Classic play and training are unrated. Only tournaments and duels move your rating.
Yes. Rating changes are zero-sum within an event, so a poor result against the field costs you points.
No. Guests can play and duel freely, but their results are unrated and do not appear on the global leaderboard.