Puckdoku

Puckdoku is the hockey grid, billed in its own header as the original hockey doku. Three rows, three columns, nine cells, and every cell is an intersection: a franchise crest against a career category such as 3+ Teams Played, or a stat, or an award. You name an NHL player who satisfies both sides. What separates it from a plain grid is that the board carries three counters rather than one. Score out of nine, Shots left, and Uniqueness, which is the one that changes how the whole thing feels.

1. Pick a cell and name a player who meets both its row and its column. He must have played at least one regular season or postseason NHL game for the team to count.
2. Accept it immediately. Each player can only be chosen once, and once a choice is made it cannot be changed.
3. Watch the shot counter, because every selection burns a shot whether it was correct or not.
4. Keep an eye on Uniqueness if you care about the second scoreboard rather than just filling the board.

Most grid games stop at right or wrong, so the moment you find any legal name the cell is done. Puckdoku bolts on a second scoreboard that pushes the opposite way: filling all nine with household names is straightforward and scores badly on Uniqueness, so the real game is digging for the fourth liner who still satisfies both halves. The rules read like a franchise history seminar, and the fact that the Winnipeg relocation warning appears twice tells you precisely which mistake everyone makes.

Two numbers answer every pick. Score counts the cells you actually filled, out of nine. Uniqueness is the interesting one: the rules define it as the sum of the percentages of the players you chose, plus 100 for every cell left empty, and a lower total means you found rarer names. There is no colour grid and no partial credit anywhere. A pick either satisfies both categories or it costs you a shot for nothing.

Classic

The default board. The page says classic dokus are available every day.

Puck Buddies

A second board in the top navigation.

Pyramid

A third board in the top navigation.

• Relocation is the trap the rules spend the most words on. Moved franchises count as one, so the 1990s Winnipeg Jets belong to the Arizona Coyotes, and the rules repeat that warning a second time under a heading that begins One last reminder.
• Retro team categories break that rule deliberately. Where a cell names something like the Hartford Whalers, relocations are disregarded, so a Nordiques player does not count for the Avalanche.
• If you are chasing a low Uniqueness, never leave a cell empty. By the stated formula an empty cell costs a flat 100, which is worse than any player you could have named.
• When a cell pairs two statistical categories, they do not have to have happened in the same season. When a cell pairs a team with an award or a stat, they do.