Turn

Turn captures an Othello game at the very end. You play black; the game is already won for you, there are ten empty squares left and only one of them preserves the victory. The board shows columns a to h, small gray dots mark the playable squares, and a line under the board sums up the situation: “Your move. One square keeps this.” The rest is classic Othello: the placed disc must sandwich a line of white discs against another black disc, and everything captured flips. When no square is playable, you pass and the engine plays again, which, the help warns, cuts both ways and makes up the core of endgame tactics. At the top, a timer and the disc count.

1. Tap one of the squares marked as playable to place a black disc there, sandwiching a line of white discs against another black disc.
2. Continue to play the endgame against the engine, passing your turn when no square is playable, until the board is full.
3. Finish with more discs than the engine: the help specifies that a tie does not count as a victory.

Taking Othello from the end is a very good idea for a daily format: no openings to learn, no long game to play, just a position the engine has already solved and where only one square survives. What makes Turn good is that the difficulty is psychological as much as combinatorial. The Othello player has learned to flip few discs, and the game deliberately builds positions so that this caution is sometimes the mistake. With no undo possible and an engine that plays the rest perfectly, each click truly commits, giving a handful of moves the weight of a tournament finish.

Nothing is taken back, and that's the heart of the game. The board repeats this under the board: every played square is played. The engine solves the position to the last disc, so once the victory is lost it does not come back, and the error counter records the miss. Two counters run at the top of the screen, time and disc count, and the score stated by the help is clear: ten points for a win, one for a loss, nothing at all if you resign, ties broken by number of errors then by time. A free hint exists, but only once in the player's life, on their very first game, and it merely circles three squares, one of which wins.

Endgame of the Day

One position per day, numbered and dated, with ten empty squares. The help specifies that on Sundays it rises to twelve empty squares.

Statistics, archive and leaderboard

A button under the board gathers the three. The site offers registration, but the daily game is played without it.

• The help itself warns against the usual reflex: flipping as few discs as possible is good Othello most of the time, and that's exactly why it's not always right here. Some positions can only be saved by the move that flips an entire line.
• Finding the winning square is not enough. The help insists: each subsequent move must hold the victory; the game is not over when the right square is played.
• Passing is a double-edged sword. Having no legal move gives the engine the turn, but forcing it on yourself is often what swings the final squares.
• The hint only works once, on the very first game, and it doesn't give the answer but three candidates. You might as well save it for a day when you're really stuck.