Puzzles without the streak

What the usual machinery does

The standard set is familiar enough to list from memory. A daily puzzle, so today is the only day it counts. A streak counter, so missing a day destroys something you built. A notification, so the decision to play is not entirely yours. A leaderboard, so your time means something relative to strangers. Sometimes lives, so the number of attempts is rationed.

None of this is accidental and none of it is about the puzzle. Each mechanism converts a thing you might enjoy into a thing you are obliged to maintain, and obligation produces far more reliable attendance than enjoyment does.

The tell is that a streak counter makes the puzzle no better. Nothing about a Sudoku grid improves because you also solved one yesterday. The counter exists to make stopping feel like a loss.

So none of it is here

There is no account, so there is nothing to log into and nothing that follows you between devices. Every puzzle is available at every difficulty at all times — nothing is rationed to tomorrow. There are no notifications, because there is no mechanism by which this site could contact you. There is no leaderboard and no global comparison of any kind.

Your best times exist, and they live in your own browser and are compared only with your previous times. Clear your browser data and they are gone, which is the correct amount of permanence for a Minesweeper time.

Closing the tab ends the session completely. Nothing is saved for your return and nothing is waiting when you come back.

A practical approach to being stuck

Being stuck is the actual puzzle. Everything before it was execution. But there is a real difference between the productive kind and grinding, and it is worth being able to tell.

1. Check for a mistake before hunting for cleverness. Most walls on a hard Sudoku are a wrong digit twenty moves back. Turn on conflict highlighting and verify what you already have.
2. Change what you are looking at. If you have been scanning rows, scan a digit across the whole grid instead. Nonograms unstick when you switch from rows to columns. A different question finds different answers.
3. Say the constraint out loud. “This box needs a 7 and only two cells can take one.” Articulating it forces precision, and imprecision is usually what is blocking you.
4. Then stop for a bit. Coming back to a grid after ten minutes and immediately seeing the move is a genuinely common experience. The puzzle keeps.
5. Or read the method. There are twenty guides and each names the technique it teaches. Looking one up is not cheating; there is no one to cheat.

What is not worth doing is guessing on the nine puzzles where guessing is unnecessary. A guess that happens to be right teaches nothing and a guess that is wrong costs the deductions built on it.

Choosing what to play

With nothing scheduled for you, the choice is yours, which is a small burden of its own. A rough guide:

• Twenty minutes of quiet deduction. Sudoku at medium, or a nonogram. Both are steady and neither punishes an interruption.
• Five minutes. Lights Out or Hanoi with four discs. Both finish quickly and neither leaves anything half-done.
• Something to actually think hard about. Crate Push from level eight, or Sudoku at hard. Expect to be stuck; that is the point.
• Concentration without deduction. Word Search or Memory. Useful when you want occupation rather than a problem.
• Someone to play against. Connect Four is the only one, and the person next to you is better company than the computer.

And if you play once and never return, that is a complete and successful use of this site. Nothing here is trying to make tomorrow's decision for you.