Scoring

#When it happens

• At the end of every Compete game: the Daily board, Longest word and Trivia on Home. Your points bank to your monthly total the moment you finish, once, and are never recomputed.
• Each game also ranks the day on its own leaderboard, by its own rule.
• Rooms and solo bank no points. A room with two or more players counts toward your games played, and toward your wins when you place first with a score above 0.
• A new month starts at zero for everyone. On the 1st, last month's top three get the podium.

#Composition

Word points (partyScore): 3 letters = 1, 4 = 2, then letters − 2.

Each rule lives in one place in the code: partyScore for words, the constants TOPWORD_PTS_PER_LETTER (3) and UNLOCK_BONUS (10) for Longest word, and TRIVIA_PTS (5) for Trivia.

Inside a room, Classic scores every word the same way (partyScore), and a word only you found counts double. Played alone, nothing doubles. Trivia rooms rank by most solved, then fewer skips, and players level on both share a place.

The live number sits in the score pill, one per game:

#Flow

1. Play. The score pill shows the live count: points on the Daily board, your longest so far in Longest word, questions solved in Trivia. On the board, a scoring word shows its points in the caption above the pill ("+3 pts") for 750ms.
2. Finish. Your result is written once to the day's board.
3. Bank. The game's points add to your monthly total in one small write. A day counts once toward days played, however many Compete games you play on it.
4. See the day. The game's card on Home turns green and shows your result: "46 pts", "6 of 9", or your place and "6 solved".
5. Rank the month. Home's leaderboard row shows your total, then the gap: "843 pts · 94 behind Samra-the real1".
6. Ask how (3.25.1). "How points work", a text button under the leaderboard's title, opens a sheet where each game says its rule in one line, and tapping it plays it (3.25.2).
7. See where it came from (3.24.0, 3.25.0). The month board opens on your own row: the month's points from each game, then your last days as bars split by game with each part's points on it, then your month and your records.

#Your month, by game

Every opened row on the month board says the same things in the same order (3.25.0):

1. Your row only: the games. Three cells give the month's points from the Daily board, Longest word and Trivia; each cell's swatch keys the bars.
2. Your row only: your last days. Up to five days with points, newest first, one bar each, split by game in the ink of --fg: Daily solid --fg, Longest --fg-soft, Trivia an outline of --fg (3.25.3). A bar's length is the day's total against the best of them; every part carries its points (3.25.6), and the day's total is on the right. A part is never narrower than its number plus 4px a side, so a small part takes its room from the bigger ones, and a bar too short for its numbers grows to hold them. Days without points get no bar.
3. The month. "12 of 31 days", then a mark a day: played days filled (--fg-soft), today outlined, the rest --rule, days still to come at half strength.
4. The records, as rows, said in full. Best Daily board (92 pts), Longest word found first (1 time, with the open lock in --earned), Best Trivia run (7 solved). Longest streak left in 3.25.1: the month strip shows the runs.

Other players' rows open on the month and the records. Your breakdown stays yours.

#How points work

The leaderboard's title is followed by one text button (3.25.1), "How points work ›", which took the place of the line "Points add up from every Compete board." It opens a sheet, "Tap a game to see it play.", where each game says its rule in one line, and tapping it plays it (3.25.2). Each row is a small board beside the game's name, its rule, and the word with the points it earns:

Each board starts empty (3.25.3). Tapping anywhere on a game plays it from the start, then it shows how it ended; and the row dips as it's pressed, like a leaderboard card. One game plays at a time. The sheet ends with "Rooms and solo games don't count." The points are computed from the constants that score the games (partyScore, TOPWORD_PTS_PER_LETTER, UNLOCK_BONUS, TRIVIA_PTS), so the sheet can't disagree with them. It's the only place the leaderboard explains points; the end of each game doesn't.

Nothing new is stored. A day's points are rebuilt from that day's own results (the entries the day's leaderboards read) with the rules on this page, which started on 2026-10-10 (SPLIT_FROM); a finished day is kept on the phone (ow_split_<date>). The month and the Trivia runs come from the day boards too: the Daily and Longest boards are read for their keys only (who has an entry), Trivia's small entries in full. A day two or more days back is kept on the phone (ow_md_<date>), so a visit after the first reads yesterday and today: 39 reads on the first visit on Oct 13, 6 after.

#States

The Home leaderboard row says one of four things:

Your row on the month board:

The How points work sheet (3.25.2):

Each Compete card, once played, turns green and shows that game's own result: the Daily board its points, Longest word your length against the goal ("6 of 9"), Trivia your place today and your count.

#Why it's built this way

#Known issues and gaps

• "The same range" is a target, not a measurement. The spec's typical values (about 40–50 for the Daily board, 6 answers = 30 for Trivia) are estimates; the sources hold no measured spread of real daily scores.
• October 2026 mixes rule sets. Points banked before 2026-10-10 used the earlier rules: letters − 2 with +50 for Longest word, and the earlier trivia scoring.
• The ranking rules are longer in the code than in the spec. The spec ranks the Daily board by total points and Longest word by "longest word, then faster". The code also breaks Daily ties on longest word, then most words, then who finished first, and puts the first player to find the longest possible word at the top of Longest word. The code wins; this page follows it.
• One row puts the name first. Before you've scored, the row reads "{name} leads with {points} pts", against the rule that numbers lead (see Voice and copy).
• A day is rebuilt with today's rules. If a game's points ever failed to bank while its result saved, or the other way round, that day's split shows what the result is worth, not what reached the total.
• "Only yours" is a choice in the app, not a lock. The split is built from the same entries every leaderboard reads.
• October 2026's cells don't add up to the total. Points from the 1st to the 9th were scored before the current rules and belong to no game; a note said so until 3.25.1, when it went to cut noise.
• Longest word and Trivia still end without points. Their end screens show your word and time, or how many you solved; the points are in the month board and in "How points work".
• The first visit of a month reads every day so far. Three small reads a day (39 on Oct 13); later visits read two days.
• A small part is drawn wider than its share. A part is never narrower than its number, so on a narrow phone a day's parts stop being in proportion: at 320 wide, Ru's 43-point Daily part on Oct 22 is drawn as wide as her two 15-point parts. The numbers and the total stay exact.
• Team scoring is built and switched off. Teams count the union of their words, a word doubles when the other team missed it, and the board's longest word is a flat +15. It needs four players to verify, so TEAM_MODE_ON is false and no room can start it.

#Related

• Trivia: the run that scores 5 per answer
• Results: where a room's standings show
• Home: the Compete cards and the leaderboard row
• Celebration: the podium on the 1st
• D-009, the scoring rebalance
• D-012, points by game
• D-013, stats on the month board
• D-014, how points work
• D-015, how points work, said once and shown
• D-016, the Daily board keeps a point a letter
• D-017, telling the games apart on the bars
• D-020, every part shows its points
• Build on Outword: "score small" in the recipe for a new mode

#Changelog