How many STRATA puzzles are there?

One new puzzle every day, rolling over at midnight UTC. Signed-in players can also play past puzzles in practice mode through the archive.

Yes. STRATA is free to play and has no ads or paywalls. No account is required for the daily puzzle.

Do I need an account?

No. Anyone can play the daily puzzle anonymously. Signing in (Google or email) unlocks stat tracking, the puzzle archive, and a leaderboard.

When does the new STRATA puzzle come out?

Midnight UTC every day. That's 7pm Eastern / 4pm Pacific the previous evening.

How to Play STRATA

Q: How is STRATA different from Wordle?

Wordle is a letter-guessing word game. STRATA is a ranking puzzle — you're given five items and must put them in the correct order along a hidden dimension like height, age, or speed. The deduction style is different: each attempt gives you feedback about position, not letters.

Q: What categories does STRATA cover?

Thirteen rotating categories: geography, biology, history, science, food, language, culture, sports, tech, music, literature, art, and everyday life. Players can vote at the end of each puzzle for the categories they'd like to see more of.

Every day, STRATA gives you five items and one hidden way to rank them. Your job is to put them in the right order, top to bottom, before you run out of attempts.

The basics

Open today's puzzle at playstrata.app and press Start.
Read the header. It tells you what you're ranking by (something like "Wingspan") and which end is which. The word at the top is item #1; the word at the bottom is item #5.
Order the five items. Drag them into the column on the right.
Submit a guess. Anything you've placed correctly locks in green. The rest stay loose so you can rearrange them.
Solve before your attempts run out. Fewer attempts and faster solves both raise your score.

Scoring

Your score depends on three things:

Whether you solved it. If you don't solve it, your streak still counts but the score is low.
How many attempts you used. Fewer is better. Solving on the first try is rare and worth a big multiplier.
How long you took. Faster is better, but accuracy matters more. A quick wrong guess is just a wasted attempt.

When you finish, you'll see your time, attempts, and score on the results screen.

What kinds of puzzles will I see?

Puzzles rotate across thirteen subjects: geography, biology, history, science, food, language, culture, sports, tech, music, literature, art, and everyday life.

In one week you might rank mountains by height, foods by caffeine, inventions by year, animals by lifespan, and cities by population. Default units are metric. You can switch to imperial in your account settings if you'd rather see miles and pounds.

Frequently asked

How is STRATA different from Wordle?

Wordle is about guessing a word one letter at a time. In STRATA, you can already see the items. You're just figuring out what order they go in.

How is STRATA different from NYT Connections or Strands?

Connections is about grouping. Strands is a themed word search. STRATA is the only one where you're ranking.

How many puzzles are there?

One per day, every day, at midnight UTC. We keep a backlog of puzzles checked weeks ahead of time.

Can I play old puzzles?

Yes. Sign in with Google or email and you'll see the Archive tab. Archive puzzles are practice, so they don't affect your stats.

Is there a daily streak?

Yes. Solve the daily puzzle and your streak goes up. If you have an account, you can skip one day in a 7-day window without losing it.

Do I need to download anything?

No. It runs in any modern browser. On mobile, you can "Add to Home Screen" for a more app-like feel.

Play today's STRATA →