CityQ

CityQ is a 3x3 grid where each row and each column has a category, and each cell asks for a city that satisfies both. The particularity is the scoring: each correct city is rated by its notoriety and the lowest total wins, so finding is only half the job. The top banner shows GUESSES, MATCHED and RARITY with the note "lower wins."

1. Read the three row labels and the three column labels, such as "Continent: Asia" or "Capital city" as in the help example.
2. Click a cell and type a city that satisfies its row and column; autocomplete handles alternative spellings.
3. Choose the most obscure valid city you can, since the score adds the notoriety of the cities found.
4. Never reuse a city already placed: the help forbids duplicates on the same grid.
5. Fill all nine cells within nine guesses, then copy the result as emoji to share.

The row-plus-column constraint is already a satisfying puzzle, but it is the rarity score that makes CityQ bite: finding an answer is not enough, you must find the one nobody thinks of. You end up digging through your memory for medium-sized cities you would never have named otherwise.

Three counters drive the round: GUESSES out of 9, MATCHED out of 9 and RARITY, with "lower wins" written underneath. The help specifies that a guess is consumed whether right or wrong, but a city absent from the database costs nothing, which leaves room to try another spelling. Each category label has a small information icon.

Daily grid

A new grid every day at midnight Eastern Time, identical for all players, numbered and dated at the top of the screen.

Archive

Links at the bottom of the page lead to yesterday's answers and to past grids.

• A city rejected because it is absent from the database does not consume a guess: when a name fails, trying another spelling is free.
• The help gives its own illustrative example: in the same cell, Lyon scores better than Paris because both are valid but the latter is too well known.
• The announced pool is every city with more than 100,000 inhabitants plus all national capitals, even very small ones: that is where the best rarity scores are hidden.
• You are not required to finish in one sitting, so hard cells can wait until an idea comes during the day.