Player of the Day

Player of the Day is the game that spun off from the rest of Futbolle, and it begins with a choice that is not trivial: the league. Six championships are offered, Süper Lig, Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, Bundesliga and Ligue 1, each with its own mystery player of the day, which allows you to play several of them the same day. The board consists of five comparison columns, TEAM, NATION, POSITION, AGE and SHIRT, plus the column for the proposed player. You type a name into the search, select it from the list, and a row fills in at once with colors that indicate the distance to the solution. The thresholds are quantified by the game itself, which is rather rare in this kind of board: three years' difference for age, five for the shirt number.

1. Choose your league from the six offered; the selector remains accessible at the top of the table to change during the day.
2. Type a footballer's name into the search and select it from the suggestions list.
3. Read the row that appears: five columns compared at once, TEAM, NATION, POSITION, AGE and SHIRT.
4. Follow the ↑ and ↓ arrows placed on age and number: they indicate whether the sought value is higher or lower.
5. Cross-check the clues for up to eight guesses, counted by the "Guess 0/8" banner.

What sets Player of the Day apart from the mass of football deduction boards is that it publishes its thresholds. You know what a yellow is worth: three years, five numbers, a continent or an adjacent position, and that precision turns some intuition into honest calculation: each row reduces a candidate space you can actually hold in your head. The division by championship finishes the job, since you choose the pool you know rather than suffer a global catalogue, and nothing prevents chaining all six. The shirt-number column, meanwhile, is a find: it's the simplest and most discriminating clue of the lot.

Three colors, and the game gives their exact definitions in its help window. Green marks an exact match; the box is set. Gray marks an error, which is still information: it removes an entire branch of candidates. Yellow is the most interesting because it is quantified: the nation turns yellow when it shares the continent, the position when it is adjacent (winger and striker, winger and midfielder, defender and midfielder), the age when within three years' difference, the shirt number when within five. On the Süper Lig board, the team column turns yellow if both clubs are from Istanbul: the yellow rule for the team is therefore specific to each championship. Added are the ↑ and ↓ arrows on age and number, which the help presents as the most effective clue on the board.

Süper Lig

The Turkish championship, the board opened by default; it's where the team column turns yellow between Istanbul clubs.

Premier League

The English championship, with its own mystery player of the day.

La Liga

The Spanish championship, with its own mystery player of the day.

Serie A

The Italian championship, with its own mystery player of the day.

Bundesliga

The German championship, with its own mystery player of the day.

Ligue 1

The French championship, with its own mystery player of the day.

• Yellow is not a vague "close": it's a stated range, three years for age and five for the number. A yellow box therefore represents an interval, not an impression.
• The arrows on age and number are the table's highest-yield clues: two ↑ in a row and an entire slice of candidates disappears, regardless of your intuition.
• The first guess should be broad rather than ambitious: a midfielder in their twenties at a mid-table club informs you in any case, whereas a nineteen-year-old superstar says almost nothing when wrong.
• On the Turkish board, Istanbul clubs behave as a block for the team column: a well-placed guess tests several clubs at once.
• When nothing else comes, an intentionally false guess that tests a nation or a position still untouched yields more than yet another plausible candidate.