How It Works

A rundown of how each game is built and scored, useful whether you're trying to understand a confusing result or just want to play smarter.

How the Daily Grid works

The Daily Grid is a 3x3 board with three row criteria and three column criteria. Every criterion is a real fact about the 2001-2025 Triple-A seasons: a specific club ("Played for the Sugar Land Space Cowboys"), a stat threshold ("15+ HR season"), or a milestone ("Made an MLB debut"). Each of the nine cells is the intersection of one row and one column, and the goal is naming a real player who satisfies both at once.

Every puzzle is generated automatically each day from the underlying player database, and every cell is checked at generation time to make sure it actually has at least one valid answer before the puzzle is published, so there's no cell where the honest answer is "nobody." Once you submit a guess for a cell, it locks: a correct guess shows the player's name and a rarity score, a wrong guess shows an ✕ and the cell stays open for review but can't be re-guessed. Each real player can only be used once per puzzle, matching how this style of grid game is played everywhere else, no repeating the same answer across multiple cells.

Rate stats (batting average, OPS, ERA) also require a qualifying sample before they count toward a Grid category or a team's record page, the same idea as MLB's own batting-title rule: 3.1 plate appearances and 1 inning pitched per team game. Without it, a pitcher's single emergency at-bat could technically post a 1.000 average and "lead" a team forever. A qualified batter needs at least 62 plate appearances and a qualified pitcher needs at least 20 innings pitched, roughly that same rate applied to a 20-game sample.

How rarity scoring works

Not every correct answer is worth the same amount. A cell with dozens of valid players is an easy find; a cell with only one or two is a real needle-in-a-haystack guess, and it should score like one. Each cell's rarity score is 100 ÷ (number of valid answers), clamped between 1 and 100, so a cell with a single valid answer scores a full 100 points and a cell with 50 valid answers scores 2. Your total rarity score for the puzzle is the sum across every cell you got right, meaning a 6/9 grid built from rare answers can genuinely outscore a 9/9 grid full of obvious ones.

This is a structural measure, based on how large each cell's own answer pool is, not on how other players actually guessed. It rewards knowing an obscure name, not just guessing fast.

How the 0-100 composite score works

Every game on the site, the Grid, Trivia, Higher/Lower, and Guess the Nickname, also shows a single 0-100 score alongside its own game-specific detail, so results are easy to compare at a glance regardless of the game's underlying mechanic. For the Grid, Higher/Lower, and Guess the Nickname, that score blends 60% completion (how many cells/rounds you finished) with 40% a difficulty bonus (rarity for the Grid, guess efficiency for Higher/Lower, clue efficiency for Guess the Nickname): finishing matters most, but doing it efficiently pushes the number higher. Trivia is the one exception: it has no difficulty dimension to blend in, since every question is weighted the same, so its composite score is a straight percentage of questions answered correctly.

How Higher/Lower and Guess the Nickname are scored

Higher/Lower shows a real player's stat line and asks you to narrow in on the exact number, with each guess told whether the real value is higher or lower. Landing it in fewer attempts scores more points per round, up to a five-attempt cap. Guess the Nickname works the same way in spirit but with clues instead of guesses: each round reveals up to four progressive text clues about a real minor league club (level, league, MLB affiliate, home city), and needing fewer clues before you land the nickname scores more points.

Curious about the terminology used across the site, levels, affiliates, call-ups, and more? Check the glossary.