How scoring works

Every game is marked out of 100, whatever it is. Add them up and that is your day.

The day's line-up

Each day Noggin sets four games, the same for everybody, and each is worth up to 100 — so the day is out of 400. Since 17 October 2026 they are Eyeball, Spectrum, Vault and Deduce (Eyeball first since the 28th); Rung held Eyeball's place before that, and every day from then keeps the total it was played for. The rest of the shelf is on More brain teasers: scored the same way and kept in your statistics, outside the day's total.

The line-up will change from time to time as the shelf grows. When it does, the change is announced on the hub, and no past day is rescored.

Your day's score is the total of the line-up, out of games × 100. It is a sum, not an average: skipping a game leaves the day short rather than quietly rescaling what you did play — and the figure beside your score on the shelf always says what the day is out of, so it stays right as the shelf grows.

Why one scale

Ordering six countries by land area and solving a logic grid have nothing in common, so any "score" for either is invented. What matters is that the two inventions are comparable — a 90 should mean roughly the same amount of "that went well" whichever game it came from, or adding them up is meaningless.

So every game is marked on the same 0–100 scale, and the shape is the same everywhere: 100 is a perfect round, and everything below it is earned rather than granted. Nothing is given for turning up.

Eyeball

In the daily line-up since 17 October 2026, and its first game since the 28th. Five things to judge by eye, dealt each day from twelve kinds of round — one guess each, scored for how close it was. Every kind has a margin inside which a guess scores the full 100, and a miss at which it scores nothing, with a straight line between the two.

So a share guessed 7 points out is 80, and 10 points out is 50. Four rounds inside their margins and one wild guess is 80. The margins were set from the first two weeks of play (17 October 2026) so that about one day in nine is a 100 — a perfect day takes a sharp eye five times running, which is the point of it.

Spectrum

Six tiles, three checks. Correct tiles lock as you find them.

A board you did not finish still scores for what you got right. Because the tiles lock as you go, that count is everything you found across all three checks, not just the last guess. Four of six is as close as a failed board can get — find five and the sixth has nowhere else to be — which is why the ceiling there is 33.

Rung

On the second shelf since 17 October 2026, outside the day's total, scored as it always was. Rung cannot be failed: the climb ends when you reach the goal word. What varies is how far past par you wandered.

Par is one rung more than the shortest climb the dictionary allows, one letter at a time. The shortest climb is computed against every word the game accepts; par gives you one to spare, so matching it means you were a step off the optimal route, and finding that route comes in under par — every day has one on ordinary words. The leap — Rung’s once-a-day move of two letters at once, at a cost of two rungs — is not counted in par either; under par is 100, the same as par.

An undo counts as a rung. It still rescues you from a dead end, but the climb you take back stays on your scorecard, like a stroke in golf. Undoing a leap gives the leap back. A hint counts as two rungs: it names the next word of a shortest climb from where you are, and the word it names is a good one, so the hint itself is the cost — one hint and the shortest route is one over par. Reset keeps every climbed rung on the card — it resets the ladder, never the score. Typing a word the game does not accept still costs nothing — only real climbs count.

Vault

A hidden code and nine guesses. Scored against the puzzle's par — the number of guesses a good solver needs on that particular code plus a little room, worked out by simulation when the puzzle was made and printed above the board before you start.

A hint tags one shape of an earlier guess on that row — exact in green, near in orange, far in red — the earliest guess first, left to right, never the same shape twice, and only shapes that counted. It turns a count into a fact about one slot, which is most of the deduction, so it costs a real slice of the score rather than a token one. Ten points is the same whether the tag says exact or far: the order is fixed, so there is nothing to shop for.

Beating par is not worth more than matching it. Par is already what a good solver needs, and the days you come in under it owe as much to the code sitting near your opening guess as to anything you did.

A locked-out board is scored on how many symbols you had exactly in place at your closest. That can never reach what a solve is worth, and the game's own shape is what prevents it rather than a rule: a row with every symbol exactly in place is a solve.

Every code is five slots from five shapes, but some codes are harder to crack than others — par is worked out for each one, so the score stays comparable.

Deduce

Twelve cells, three checks, three hints. Solving starts from a base set by how many checks it took, then the clock and any hints adjust it.

So a perfect Deduce — first check, no hints, inside seven minutes — is exactly 100. A careful eleven-minute solve with nothing else against it is 90.

The clock only counts when you solve it. There is no reward for failing quickly, and piling a slowness penalty on top of a failure would be unkind.

A spent grid cannot score near a solve, and the puzzle's own shape is what prevents it rather than a rule: every value is used exactly once down a column, so three right in a column forces the fourth. Half the grid is the most a wrong grid can hold.

Mini

The crossword on the second shelf is scored on the same scale but sits outside the day’s line-up: its number is kept for you and shown on its own sheet, and it never moves the day’s total. Every solve starts at 100.

So a clean solve inside two minutes is 100; six minutes with one check is 64.

Blink

Also on the second shelf and outside the line-up. Ten rounds of spot-the-change, scored on the clock round by round.

So ten rounds found in four seconds each is 100, ten at eight seconds each is 80, and seven found at six seconds with three rounds lost to a wrong tap is 57. The clock waits while the page is away.

Connect

Ten trails a day on an 8×8 grid, 115 dots in all (seven dots to sixteen; the last four trails cross themselves); the score is the share of the trail you remembered.

So ten perfect trails is 100, and a slip on the last dot of the sixteen-dot trail still pays for the fifteen before it: 99.

Trace

Three rounds — trace, recall, mirror — each scored 0–100 for the form of the drawing: it is slid and scaled onto the shape first, so where it landed and how big it came out never matter.

So a tracing at 100 with 70 and 60 from memory is 72. A different shape altogether stays in the forties however neatly it is drawn.

Fold

Four rounds of paper folding — two folds and a punch, then three folds, then two punches, then the fourth round backward — each scored for the holes you marked.

So four perfect rounds is 100; three perfect and one with four of six holes found and no strays is 92.

Bracket

Five questions with a number for an answer, each bracketed between two handles on a track — scored for how narrow the bracket was, if the answer was inside it.

So five brackets each a tenth of their track, all holding the answer, is 90; four of those and one miss is 72. A logarithmic track is measured the same way, in its own scale — a tenth of it is a tenth of the powers of ten it spans.

Weigh

Five parcels, five known weights, a balance — scored against par, the fewest weighings that can always tell the parcels apart.

So par 6 solved in six weighings is 100; in eight, or in six with a wrong check, 70. Three wrong checks end the puzzle unsolved, and that day is 0.

Split

Twelve numbers into four groups of three that each add to the target — three rounds, each scored for the groups you got wrong along the way.

So three clean rounds is 100; two clean and one with two mistakes is 87.

Sudoku

Three boards a day — Easy, Medium and Hard — and the first one you finish is the day’s score. The other two stay open to play and change nothing. Every entry is checked as you make it.

So a board with one mistake and one hint is 88. The three levels score on the same curve — pick the one you want to play — and the clock is shown on the results sheet, never scored.

Chrono

Six events dealt one at a time into a growing timeline — scored for the cards you put in the right gap the first time.

So six of six is 100, five is 83 and four is 67. Every card is worth the same, early or late, and Gentle, Fair and Mean days score on the same scale.

Grow

A word tree of five rows, from three letters to seven — scored on the clock, and for the hints you took, never for the tries.

So a tree grown in a minute and a half with no hints is 100, three minutes is 85, and five minutes with one hint is 57. The clock starts on your first move and waits while the page is away. Any real word of a row’s letters counts, and Gentle, Fair and Mean days score on the same scale.

Crumble

A board of falling letters, every word on the day’s theme — scored for the mistakes you made clearing it, never for the time.

So one decoy and one hint is 70. A board is always cleared in the end — the last word standing crumbles on its own — and Gentle, Fair and Tricky days, which differ in how many decoys the board carries, score on the same scale.

Practice rounds and replays

Only your first, genuine attempt at a day's puzzle is scored. Playing a finished puzzle again is welcome and changes nothing — your score, your streak and your statistics all stay where they were. The results sheet will tell you how the replay compared.

The archive

Every past day's puzzle is there to play, from the Puzzle archive button on any results sheet. A day you never played scores the first time and the score sticks, counting toward your all-time total — but it is a puzzle played late, not a day you showed up for, so it never mends a broken streak.

Streaks

Your streak counts consecutive days on which you played anything at all — one game out of the line-up is enough to keep it. A day where life got in the way of the rest should not wipe out a month.

Today not being finished yet never breaks it. Until you open a puzzle, the streak is measured up to yesterday, so it does not read zero every morning.

Daily average

The middle number on the shelf is your average day: each day's line-up total, averaged over every day you have played. Games outside the line-up are not in it, and a day you played from the archive counts like any other.

A word on the numbers

These curves are considered guesses, not laws. Nobody has yet played enough Noggin for us to know what an average Deduce looks like, and when we do, these are likely to be adjusted so that a score means the same thing across games in practice and not just on paper. Old scores are kept with a record of which version of the rules produced them, so nothing has to be thrown away when that happens.

Scoring version 2, in effect since 15 August 2026.