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Reading the Daily Puzzle

One position a day, taken from the exact moment a game turned.

Written and maintained by Jasper Taylor for Pura Viba LLC · Updated July 30, 2026

The daily puzzle is the same for everyone, refreshes once per calendar day, and is quietly the best training tool the game has. Each one is a real decision point — not a constructed “mate in two,” but a position from an actual game frozen at the instant one precise move mattered most. Learning to read the puzzle, and its grades, teaches you to read your own games.

Play today’s puzzle →

Where the positions come from

Puzzles are mined from real games. A tool scans finished games looking for the moment the evaluation swung on a single move — the point where one side had a clearly best option and it was easy to miss. That position becomes the puzzle: you’re shown the board and asked to find the best move. Because they’re drawn from genuine play, the puzzles reward the same skills that win games — counting the royal spread, spotting a zap-then-capture, noticing a heal overflow — rather than contrived tricks.

How grading works

Your move is graded against the engine’s own ranked list of every legal move in the position. Two things feed the grade: how your move ranked among all the legal options, and how much evaluation it gave away versus the best move. Crucially, it isn’t all-or-nothing — a move that keeps a winning position winning still scores well even if it wasn’t the single best choice, while a move that throws the position away earns the bottom grade no matter how natural it looked.

The grades, best to worst:

Star — you found the engine’s top move.
Green — excellent; barely any evaluation lost.
Yellow — solid; a reasonable move that concedes a little.
Orange — inaccurate; you gave away real ground.
Red — a mistake that hurt the position.
Skull — you threw the position away.

Streaks and sharing

Playing the daily records your result for that calendar day and feeds your streak — the number of consecutive days you’ve played. When you finish, you get a spoiler-free share card with your grade shown as emoji (in the spirit of Wordle results) that you can paste anywhere without giving the answer away. Two things to know: skipping a day breaks the streak, and watching the solution without playing records nothing — so if you want to keep a streak alive, take your attempt before you peek. A free account syncs your streak across devices.

Using puzzles to improve

The puzzle is a strategy course disguised as a daily habit. To get the most from it:

Count before you move. Note the royal spread and which pieces are load-bearing (watch for closed groups) before you commit.
Ask what the position is punishing. Most mined positions turn on a single idea — a missed zap order, an overlooked reveal, a heal that should have overflowed. Name the idea, not just the move.
Review after. When you miss, look at why the engine’s move scored higher — it’s almost always a cleaner path through one of the ideas in these guides.
Don’t chase the star at any cost. A green every day builds better habits than a star-or-skull gamble.

Play today’s puzzle → Puzzle FAQ →