How to play
Every day there is a new puzzle in each mode. You have unlimited guesses. Type any university and every guess colours six tiles:
GreenMatch
YellowClose
RedNo match
- Continent: green when it's the same continent.
- Country: yellow when your country shares a land border with the answer's.
- City: yellow when it's in the same state or region.
- Founded: yellow within 50 years. ↑ means the answer is younger, ↓ older.
- Students: yellow for the next size band (under 5k, 5–15k, 15–30k, 30–60k, 60k+). Arrows point to the answer's size.
- Rank: the university's place in the QS World University Rankings 2026 (THE 2026 when QS doesn't rank it). Green within 10 places of the answer, yellow within 20. Ranks given as a band, like 601–650, count from the middle of the band. ↑ means the answer is ranked higher, closer to #1.
The globe pins every guess and colours it by distance: green within 100 km of the answer, yellow within 1,000 km, with a ring around it to show where the answer can be. When a guess turns yellow or green on the map, the globe zooms in on that area.
The three modes
- Mystery: no famous person, no clue. Just you, the tiles and the globe.
- Classic: find a university the famous person studied at. Any university they attended counts; the colours point to their best-known one.
- Degrees: find where they earned their bachelor's, master's and doctorate. Pick a degree card, then guess. Some people skipped a degree.
Hints
Stuck? The first hint unlocks after 3 guesses, then one more every 2 guesses. Each hint is more precise than the one before:
- Mystery (5 hints): the century it was founded, the part of the world, the lay of the land (how far from the sea, where it sits in its country), a famous student (or the region), then the city.
- Classic (5 hints): the part of the world, what the person studied there, the lay of the land, the first letter of the university's name, then the city.
- Degrees (4 hints, covering every degree still to find): the part of the world, the country, the first letter, then the city.
When you find the answer you get today's rank: fewer guesses rank higher, then fewer hints, then who finished first.
You can guess any of the 2,500+ universities in the QS and Times Higher Education world rankings, plus a few famous colleges. Founding years and locations come from the ROR research-organisation registry (some universities have older roots, noted on the answer card). Student numbers are approximate.