Magnitudle

An estimation game that scores you in powers of ten rather than in digits. The Daily asks one question with a unit attached, you get one number, and Magnitudle grades the distance between your answer and the truth logarithmically, so it does not care whether you nailed the figure, only whether you found the right scale. One question asked how many different products sit on the shelves of a typical Walmart Supercenter; a guess of 120,000 against a real 142,000 came back as 0.1 orders of magnitude under and scored 98 out of 100. Around that Daily sits a genuinely different set of extra modes, including a weekly one that can kill you.

1. Read the unit line. Under every question Magnitudle states what it wants counted, and that sentence is the difference between an answer in products and an answer in dollars.
2. Type the significant digits, then hit a multiplier. Typing 120 and tapping x1K writes 120,000 for you, and the box confirms it in words as 120 thousand.
3. Lock in answer. One guess, no take-backs.

Magnitudle is built on the idea that most people cannot tell a million from a billion, and it turns that into a scoring system rather than a gotcha. Because the grade is logarithmic you are never humiliated for being roughly right, which makes the Daily welcoming, and yet the same rule makes Survival genuinely tense, since the life bar drains by exactly the amount you misjudged the scale. The extras earn their place too, because dragging Luxembourg to size against Singapore trains a completely different sense than typing a number does. It costs nothing, needs no account, cites its sources, and the archive is open without any streak penalty attached.

The verdict is unusually informative for a one-shot game. You get a score out of 100, your guess and the real answer side by side with their units, and the sentence that actually teaches you something, which reads as a magnitude error: 0.1 orders of magnitude under. That framing is the whole design. Being out by a factor of two barely dents the score, while being out by a factor of a thousand ruins it, and the how-to card demonstrates it with a worked example where guessing a million against a real 600,000 still scores 92. Underneath sits a fun fact with a named source, so every day ends with a citation rather than a shrug.

Daily

One question, one guess, scored out of 100. Feeds your streak, your statistics and the leaderboards.

Survival

The one worth clearing your schedule for. It opens each Wednesday, you get a single attempt per weekly challenge, and you start with 10 life and 15 seconds a question. Every answer subtracts your magnitude error from your life, so being 0.3 out costs 0.3 and being 8.6 out ends the run on the spot.

Size It Up

Five rounds of visual scale on a canvas. You drag a silhouette bigger or smaller until it looks right next to a reference object, then lock in. One round put Luxembourg beside Singapore and scored the answer in kilometres, 33.57 against a real 81.72, worth 30 of a possible 100.

Size It Up: Pop Culture

The same drag-to-scale rules with fictional silhouettes on both sides of the comparison, running as its own daily.

Archive

Every past Daily, Size It Up and Pop Culture puzzle in one filterable table, marked completed or to play. Attempts here are explicitly ring-fenced from your streak and stats.

• Stop trying to be exact. The scale is logarithmic, so the effort you would spend refining 140,000 into 142,000 is worth almost nothing, while the two seconds you spend checking you are in thousands and not millions is worth the entire score.
• Always tap a multiplier rather than typing zeros. Miscounting a zero is a full order of magnitude and the single most expensive mistake available in this game; the buttons make it impossible.
• In Size It Up, zoom out first. The board gives you a zoom-out button described as more resizing space, and starting cramped is how you end up unable to drag the silhouette as large as the answer actually needs.