Chain Reaction

Chain Reaction serves up a mystery restaurant chain each day, divided into five services. The game defines its own terms: any regional or national restaurant with at least five locations counts as a chain, and if you've encountered it in more than one state, it's in the database. The order of the clues never changes: the brand's age, its birthplace, a fragment of the logo (or a workaround when the logo would give it away), the slogan, then the full logo or a final fact when the logo is reduced to the name. The page is presented like a menu, with a CHAINIVORE PRESENTS banner, a daily puzzle number, and a SUBMIT ORDER button to confirm your choice.

1. Read the clue card, topped by the badge COURSE 1 OF 5 and a five-segment progress bar.
2. Type a chain name into the field, then choose an entry from the drop-down list: freeform input is rejected, but typos are corrected.
3. Submit with SUBMIT ORDER.
4. If you're stuck, the Skip button reveals the next service at the cost of a wrong answer.

Because guessing a chain from its year of founding or its slogan taps a memory you didn't know you had: the one for storefronts. The restaurant motif, from the CHAINIVORE PRESENTS banner to the SUBMIT ORDER button, runs across the five services without ever weighing the game down.

Scores are shown as stars, and the rules panel displays the full scale: five stars if the chain is identified on the first clue, one star on the fifth, none if you draw a blank. Each additional service therefore costs one star, and skipping a clue counts exactly as a wrong answer. The five-segment bar at the top of the page represents the current service.

Daily Puzzle

A single mystery chain per day, numbered on the page.

• The order of clues is fixed: if you know that service 2 will give the city of origin, it can sometimes be worthwhile to burn service 1 rather than guessing at random, since the cost is the same.
• The field only accepts entries from the list: type three or four letters and let autocomplete suggest options, rather than trying to find the exact spelling.
• Service 3 sometimes shows only a fragment of the logo, but when the logo would give away the chain, the game replaces it with a workaround clue: don't automatically look for an image.