Four ways to reach the same person

⚡ Versus — both online, racing the same board

Like sitting next to them with a stopwatch running.

You and your opponent get an identical board at the same instant and a clock starts. You each work your own copy, so nothing one of you does can spoil the other's puzzle. What crosses the wire is progress, not answers.

That design choice is why a Versus duel survives a bad connection. A dropped packet costs you a progress update, not a keystroke — you keep solving locally and catch up when the signal returns.

It's the purest form of the thing: same puzzle, same start, no excuses about difficulty.

🎲 Turns — one shared board, alternating moves

Like a board on a table between you.

Both players look at a single board and move in sequence. Every move is validated on the server, so the board can never disagree between two phones and nobody can move out of turn.

This is the mode board games need. A four-in-a-row position is meaningless unless both players are looking at the same one, and a race format would ruin it entirely.

It also degrades gracefully. If one player wanders off mid-game, the position just waits.

🤝 Co-op — same board, same side

Like two people leaning over the same newspaper.

Two players on one grid with no turns at all. Either of you can act at any moment and both see every change land immediately.

Removing turns is what makes this collaborative rather than alternating. You're not waiting for permission — you're both working, and the friction becomes coordination rather than patience.

Co-op games are deliberately unrated. A rating measures one player against another, and a shared solve has no losing side, so the server skips the rating update entirely.

🌙 Anytime — the one that actually matters

Like leaving something on their doormat.

You play, your result is posted, and the challenge sits in your opponent's app until they open it. They get the same board and your score to beat. Whenever that is.

Live multiplayer has a structural problem nobody talks about: it needs two specific people free at the same specific moment. For a partner in the same house that's easy. For a sibling three time zones away, or a friend with a newborn, it essentially never happens — which is why most games-with-friends lapse in week two and never recover.

A challenge that waits doesn't have that problem. It's the difference between scheduling a phone call and sending a message.

What a duel is worth

Every competitive result does two things. It goes into a permanent head-to-head record against that specific person — per friend, per game, never reset — and it moves a Glicko-2 rating.

Glicko-2 is the family of rating system competitive chess uses. The useful difference from plain Elo is that it tracks a second number: how confident it is about you. A new player's rating moves in big jumps until the system has seen enough games, then settles. If you disappear for three months, the uncertainty widens again, so your first game back doesn't punish an opponent for beating a number that had gone stale.

Co-op games don't move it, because there is nobody to take points from. That's deliberate — nobody should hesitate to help their partner because it might cost them a number.

The longer version: Elo vs Glicko-2 →

Questions about the modes