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.

STRATA is a daily ranking puzzle. Every day, you get five items and one hidden dimension. Your job is to put them in the correct 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 shows the dimension (e.g. Wingspan) plus direction labels — usually a word like longest at the top and shortest at the bottom. The top label is item #1, the bottom is #5.
Order the five items. Drag them into the column on the right in the order you think is correct.
Submit a guess. Any item you've placed in the right spot will lock in green. The rest stay loose for you to rearrange.
Solve before your attempts run out. Speed + fewer attempts = higher score.

Scoring

Your score is a product of three things:

Whether you solved it. Unsolved puzzles still count for streaks but score low.
Attempts used. Fewer is better. Solving in one attempt is rare and worth a huge multiplier.
Time taken. Faster solves get a speed bonus, but accuracy beats speed every time — a fast wrong guess is just a wasted attempt.

After completing the puzzle, you'll see your time, attempt count, and score multiplier on the result modal.

What kinds of puzzles will I see?

STRATA pulls from thirteen rotating categories: geography, biology, history, science, food, language, culture, sports, tech, music, literature, art, and everyday life.

A typical week might include ranking five mountains by elevation, five common foods by caffeine content, five inventions by year, five animals by lifespan, and five cities by population. Some puzzles use metric units; toggle imperial in your account preferences if you'd rather see miles and pounds.

Frequently asked

How is STRATA different from Wordle?

Wordle is letter-by-letter word guessing. STRATA is positional ranking. You're never guessing what the items are — they're shown to you. You're deducing what order they belong in along a hidden axis. It's a faster, more visual deduction loop.

How is STRATA different from NYT Connections or Strands?

Connections is about grouping items into categories. Strands is a word search with a theme. STRATA is the only one of the three where ordering is the entire mechanic.

How many puzzles are there?

One per day, every day, dropping at midnight UTC. A buffer of upcoming puzzles is curated and validated weeks in advance.

Can I play old puzzles?

Yes — sign in (Google or email) and the Archive tab opens up. Archive plays are practice mode and don't affect your stats.

Is there a daily streak?

Yes. Solve the daily puzzle to extend your streak. Streaks survive a single skip in a 7-day window if you have an account.

Do I need to download anything?

No. STRATA runs in any modern browser. You can "Add to Home Screen" on mobile to get an app-like experience — it's a Progressive Web App.

Play today's STRATA →