Rotaboxes

Rotaboxes cuts a daily photograph into square tiles and turns each one by 90, 180 or 270 degrees before you arrive. Your job is to turn them all back. The rules sit on the page beside the board along with three counters, tiles left to rotate, your number of clicks and the ideal number of clicks, and the photo credit runs underneath, ours was by Fr. Daniel Ciucci on Unsplash. A leaderboard below the game ranks players by streak, progress, overspin and score.

1. Click any tile to rotate it 90 degrees.
2. Choose the direction by choosing where you click. The left side of a tile turns it counter clockwise, the right side turns it clockwise, and the rules say this is how you reach the ideal click count.
3. Hit Preview when you are lost. It shows the finished picture for three seconds and costs one extra click.
4. Keep going until every tile is back in its original position, which the rules give as the win condition.

Rotaboxes is trivially solvable and quietly demanding at the same time. Anyone can brute force a photo back into place by clicking until it looks right, but the panel keeps the ideal click count sitting next to your own, and the only way to close that gap is to think about direction before every tap. It is a calm game with a scoreboard bolted to it, and the daily picture is a real photograph with a credit underneath.

Three numbers do all the talking and they stack up beside the board: tiles left to rotate, your number of clicks, and the ideal number of clicks for the day's picture. That third one is the actual game, because finishing is only a matter of persistence while finishing efficiently is not. The leaderboard underneath adds the longer view, ranking on streak, progress, overspin and score.

Daily photo

One photograph per day, with Previous game and Next game links under the board and an All games link between them.

Leaderboard

A ranked table under the game with Streak, Progress, Overspin and Score columns, and a prompt to sign up to claim a spot on it.

• Click the correct half of the tile. Both halves rotate it, but only one of them rotates it the short way, and the ideal click count assumes you picked right every single time.
• Treat Preview as a real cost. It adds a click to your total and holds the picture for three seconds, so decide which corner you need to look at before you press it.