How to play Spectrum
Six things, one hidden scale, three chances to get them in order.
The rules
- You get six tiles and a scale with a label at each end — smallest to largest, oldest to newest, mildest to hottest. The direction flashes up before the tiles arrive, so check which way it runs.
- Drag a tile to move it, or tap two tiles to swap them.
- Press Check when you are happy. Tiles in the right place turn green and lock; the wrong ones shake and stay movable.
- You have three checks. When the last one is spent the board sorts itself out and the real numbers are revealed.
What locking actually means
This is the part that decides the game. A locked tile is confirmed — it is in its final position and cannot move again. So every check does two jobs: it tells you how close you are, and it permanently fixes whatever you had right.
That makes an early check less wasteful than it looks. If you are confident about two or three tiles and hazy about the rest, checking early locks the ones you know and leaves a much smaller problem behind. The tiles you are unsure about are the only ones still in play.
Getting better at it
- Place the extremes first. You almost always know which one is biggest or oldest. Anchoring both ends turns six unknowns into four.
- Order in pairs. Rather than trying to rank all six at once, ask only "is this one bigger than that one" repeatedly. Six items is a lot to hold in your head; two is not.
- Do not save all three checks. Checks that are never spent are worth nothing, and a spent check locks progress. Holding all three until you are certain is the most common way to run out with nothing locked.
- Watch for the counter-intuitive one. Most puzzles hide one item that is much bigger or older than it feels. If a set seems too easy, that is usually why.
Scoring
Solving on the first check is 100, the second 85, the third 70. Running out of checks still scores for the tiles you locked, up to 33 — a board with four of six in place is a long way from a blank one and is marked as such.
Full details on how scoring works.
Why the numbers are shown at the end
Every puzzle reveals the actual values once it is over — the real land areas, populations, release dates. A puzzle you got wrong should still leave you knowing something you did not know before, which is most of the point of this one.