How to Play
Everything you need to go from your first square to a cleared board.
The Board
Every grid is a 3×3 board with a category label on each of the three columns and each of the three rows. That gives you nine squares, and each square sits at the intersection of exactly two categories.
To fill a square you name one footballer or Formula 1 driver who satisfies both the category above it and the category beside it. If the column says Real Madrid and the row says Champions League Winner, you need someone who was at Real Madrid and has won the Champions League — not necessarily in the same season, and not necessarily with that club.
Categories come in several flavours: clubs and constructors, national teams and nationalities, competitions and honours, playing positions, and decades. Which ones appear depends on the sport and, for Formula 1, on the era you pick.
Filling a Square
- Tap or click the square you want to attempt. It highlights, and the answer box unlocks.
- Start typing a name. The box suggests names from the game's database as you type, which is the fastest way to check you have the spelling the game expects.
- Press Lock In. A correct answer fills the square with that player's name and adds a point.
A wrong answer costs you nothing but time. Outside Race Mode there is no clock either, so you can think as long as you like.
Once you have used a player, they are spent for that board. Reusing one returns Player Already Used and the square stays open.
That second rule is the whole game. Plenty of squares could be filled by the same handful of famous names, so the real challenge is deciding which square to spend each name on.
Scoring
Your score is simply the number of squares you have filled, out of nine. Fill all nine and you have cleared the board — a perfect grid.
In the Daily Grid you can stop early with Give Up & Claim Points, which banks the squares you have already solved. Banking keeps your points but ends your streak, so it is a genuine trade-off rather than a free exit.
The Daily Grid & Streaks
A new Daily Football Grid appears every day at 00:00 UTC, and the countdown on the home page tells you exactly how long the current one has left. Everybody in the world plays the same board, which is what makes comparing scores meaningful.
Clearing the daily extends your streak by one. Play the next day and it grows again. Miss a day, or bank early instead of clearing the board, and the streak restarts at one the next time you finish a grid.
You get one attempt per day. Once the day's grid is recorded, the button stays closed until the next rollover.
Endless Grids
Endless Football and Formula 1 generate fresh boards on demand, with no daily limit and no clock. The generator only builds boards it has verified are solvable, so every grid you see has at least one valid answer in every square.
Formula 1 grids let you pick an era, which changes both the drivers in play and the categories that can appear:
- Easy — 2010 to the present. Modern grids, familiar names.
- Hard — 1990 to the present. Adds three more decades of teams and drivers.
- Historian — every era from 1950. The full field, including constructors that folded decades ago.
Endless mode is the best place to learn. The same categories recur, so patterns you spot here pay off later in the Daily and in ranked matches.
Race Mode — Live 1v1
Race Mode puts you against another player in real time. You are matched automatically, both of you get the same board, and a five-minute clock starts together. Whoever fills more squares before time runs out takes the win; filling all nine ends it immediately.
The scoreboard shows your opponent's progress live, which changes how you play: falling behind is a reason to take the squares you are sure of rather than the one you are still puzzling over.
Ranked wins are worth +10 trophies, losses −5. Trophies feed Trophy Road, which unlocks cosmetic titles, profile borders and tokens at 10, 50, 250, 1,000 and 5,000 trophies. Challenges you send directly to a friend are unranked, so nothing is at stake.
Tic-Tac-Toe Mode
Same board, different objective. Players alternate turns, and a correct answer claims that square with your symbol. Get three in a row — across, down or diagonally — and you win, no matter how many squares are left.
A wrong answer hands the turn straight to your opponent, so speed matters far less than certainty. This is the mode where blocking becomes as valuable as scoring: taking the centre square, or denying an opponent's third-in-a-row, is often worth more than an easy square elsewhere.
DIY Creator
Build your own board by choosing the row and column categories yourself, in 3×3, 4×4 or 5×5. A live difficulty readout updates as you type, so you can tell whether you are building something clever or something impossible.
Finished grids compress into a share code. Paste a friend's code to play theirs, or send yours straight to their in-game inbox.
Do I Need an Account?
No. The Daily Grid, Endless modes and the DIY Creator all work without signing in.
An account adds the things that need to persist or involve other people: saved streaks and stats, the global leaderboards, Trophy Road, friends, the inbox, and both multiplayer modes.
Ready for more? Read the strategy guide.