About
How to play
One mineral, gem or metal a day, the same one for everybody. Guess as many times as you need. There is no limit, and no way to lose. Each guess is scored column by column:
- ✓ An exact match.
- ≈ Partly right: some shared members, or a related branch.
- ✕ No match.
Hints
Every mode but practice offers hints, and they cost nothing: no guess is spent, and a streak is never broken by one. Each one narrows the field further than the last: the first rules out a good deal, the last leaves a handful of names. None of them ever tells you the answer; that is what giving up is for.
They unlock as you guess and then wait for you. Nothing expires, so guessing on without asking leaves you holding several at once, and you can spend them one after another whenever you like. The button says how many you have and how far off the next one is.
- Daily
- 4 hints. The first after 3 guesses, then one more every 2 guesses.
- Hard
- One hint, after 5 guesses.
- Picture
- 3 hints. The first after 3 guesses, then one more every 2 guesses.
- Picture Hard
- One hint, after 4 guesses.
The columns
- Colour
- A match when it is the same, no match when it is not. The colour the stone is usually found in, reduced to one word. Many are found in several; this is the one the source names first.
- Crystal shape
- A match when it is the same, no match when it is not. The symmetry its crystals grow in: cubic, hexagonal and so on. Labelled shape rather than system because that is what it looks like.
- Made of
- A match when the whole set matches, close when at least 1 member is shared. Element symbols read out of the chemical formula, not hand-listed. Gold is Au; quartz is Si and O.
The other modes
- Hard
- The same board, but you get 8 guesses and can lose. It is a different mineral, gem or metal from the daily one, on its own sequence and with its own streak, so solving one tells you nothing about the other.
- Picture
- Guess from an image that sharpens with every wrong guess and is fully clear after 6. No columns, no limit, and again its own sequence and streak.
- Picture Hard
- The same idea in 8 guesses. The picture clears just as fast; what is harder is that you can run out.
- Practice
- A random mineral, gem or metal, as many rounds as you like. Nothing is recorded, and it can never draw a scheduled answer.
Where the material comes from
Entities are drawn from Wikidata and checked by hand. Images come from Wikimedia Commons and are kept only when they carry a licence that permits commercial use and modification. Anything NonCommercial or NoDerivatives is discarded rather than quietly used.
Facts are researched and written by a person, each with a source you can follow. None of them are generated by a language model. Where a value is contested or simply unrecorded, the field is left blank rather than filled with a plausible-looking guess.
Scope
This game covers minerals, gem varieties and native metals together. That is deliberately not the mineralogist's line: a gem variety is a variety of a species rather than a species of its own, and gold is filed as a chemical element. But ruby, emerald and gold are the names a player reaches for first, and a game that excluded them would be exactly right and no fun.
Who makes this
I am a developer who makes small games for fun. This site is three daily puzzles sharing one engine I built for it: a minute a day, no account, nothing to install, and every fact checked against its sources.
They are free and they stay free. If you have enjoyed them and want to chip in for a coffee, my Ko-fi page is here. It is welcome and never expected.