The Daily Investor

Daily Investor announces its program before it even starts, which is rare enough to note: the home page details the day's five rounds one by one. Two geography questions that answer each other by pointing to a place on a map, one economics culture question presented as four choices, one business history question whose format the home page does not specify, and a final round in which you must find the stock ticker of a listed company from a single clue. The day's number is shown at the top, and the slogan sums up the contract: five questions for one score. The first round opens on a Leaflet map based on OpenStreetMap, zoomable and pannable, topped by the name of the country in question and a box left on “No guess yet”. A five-segment bar follows progress at the top of the board, a YOUR GUESS banner invites you to place your point, and the submit button stays inactive until something is placed. The footer makes a point of stating that this is an educational game and not financial advice. Note that the .us address automatically redirects to the the-daily-investor.com domain.

1. Start the day's game from the home page, which displays the five-round menu in advance.
2. Map round: read the clue, zoom and pan the map, then tap the chosen spot to place your point. The instructions warn that the closer the point, the more the round is worth.
3. Validate with Submit map guess; the button only activates once the point is placed, then move on with Next round.
4. Rounds 3 and 4: the home page announces them as an economics culture question with four choices and then a business history question, without specifying the format of the latter.
5. Round 5: the home page announces a stock ticker to be found from a single clue.
6. Compare the total score; the five rounds yield a single grade.

The mix is smarter than it looks: rather than lining up five multiple-choice finance questions, Daily Investor alternates three different actions. Placing a point on a map, choosing among four options, and finding a stock ticker from a single clue. The map round changes everything, because it scores by distance rather than all-or-nothing: an approximate intuition earns something, which makes the session playable even when the subject eludes you. Five rounds for a single score, an incrementing issue number and a nearby leaderboard make the loop short and clear. One caveat the game itself shows in the footer and that you should keep in mind: it's general knowledge, not wealth management.

For map rounds, the feedback is a distance converted into points, and the instructions state it plainly: the closer the point placed is to the correct location, the more the round is worth. So it's a continuous scoring scale, not a right-or-wrong binary, which gives some value to an honest approximation. The five-segment bar at the top of the board counts the rounds completed, and the YOUR GUESS box stays on “No guess yet” until something has been placed. The five rounds are combined into a single score; that's the promise of the top banner.

Daily game

Five numbered, dated rounds, announced in advance on the home page.

Leaderboards and leagues

A LEADERBOARD button at the top of the page, and under the game two buttons: View leaderboard and Create a league.

• The map is zoomable and the scoring depends on distance: on a round announced at city level, take the time to zoom before placing the point; a random click at country scale costs points for nothing.
• The YOUR GUESS box is the only safeguard on the board: as long as it shows that no point has been placed, the submit button remains inactive, which prevents wasting a round with nothing entered.
• The program is public from the home page: two map rounds, two economics culture rounds, one final on a stock ticker. Knowing the last round will be about a ticker helps you manage your time on the earlier ones.