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Daily puzzle

Element of the day

Wordle, but the answer is one of the 118 elements. Six guesses, one puzzle a day, and the same element for everyone playing.

Every guess is scored on five things

  1. 1Atomic number and whether the answer is higher or lower
  2. 2Group the column, 1 to 18
  3. 3Period the row, 1 to 7
  4. 4Block s, p, d or f
  5. 5Category alkali metal, noble gas and so on
Green is an exact matchAmber is close, within one row or columnGrey is no match

6 guesses left

How to play

  1. 1Type any element into the box. Its name, its symbol or its atomic number all work, so Fe, iron and 26 are the same guess.
  2. 2The guess appears as a row of five cells. The first names the element you guessed, and the other four cover its group, period, block and category.
  3. 3Each cell is coloured by how close that part of your guess was, and the first cell also tells you whether the answer sits higher or lower in atomic number.
  4. 4Use what comes back to narrow it down, and get it in six.

What a row looks like

Say the answer were calcium and you opened with magnesium. The row would come back like this:

  1. Mg · Magnesium12, higherGroup2Period3BlocksTypeAlkaline Earth Metal

Magnesium is 12 and calcium is 20, so the first cell is grey and tells you to go higher. Both sit in group 2, so that cell is green. Magnesium is in period 3 and calcium in period 4, one row apart, so that cell is amber. Both are s-block alkaline earth metals, so those two are green. From there you are choosing between the group 2 metals heavier than magnesium, which is a short list.

Questions

Is this like Wordle?

It works the same way. There is one hidden answer a day, you get six guesses, and each guess is colour coded to tell you how close you were. The difference is what you are guessing and what the colours mean: instead of letters in a word, you are narrowing down an element by its atomic number, group, period, block and category.

How is the element chosen?

All 118 elements are shuffled once into a fixed order, and the puzzle walks one step along that order each day. Nothing is random on the day, so every player in the world gets the same element, and no element comes back around until all the others have had a turn.

When does a new element appear?

At midnight in your own time zone. The countdown on the finished board tells you exactly how long is left.

Do I need an account to play?

No. There is no sign up, no login and nothing to pay. Your guesses and your streak are saved in your own browser and never sent anywhere, which does mean they stay on the device you played on.

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