Games like
Games like Immaculate Grid and Poeltl, for sports fans.
Sports dailies test what you know about players: who played where, who fits two clues at once. Huezle tests what you remember about games and seasons, from the shape of the score alone.
What Immaculate Grid and Poeltl are
Immaculate Grid, from Sports Reference, is a daily three-by-three grid. Each row and column is a clue, usually a team or an achievement, and for each square you name a player who fits both. Nine guesses for nine squares, no player twice, and each correct answer gets a rarity score, so an obscure pick counts for more. It started with baseball and now covers other sports.
Poeltl is a daily guess-the-NBA-player game in the style of Wordle. Each guess shows which details, such as team, position and height, match the mystery player or come close.
Both reward fans who know careers, trades and rosters.
What to look for in a game like them
- Room for deep knowledge. The obscure answer should be worth something.
- Clues that combine, so a guess feels earned.
- One puzzle a day for everybody, so a group chat can argue about it.
How Huezle is similar, and different
Huezle is a daily puzzle too, and five of its categories are sports: NBA, NBA Playoffs, NFL, Hockey and the Premier League. But it never asks about a player. Each strip is a game or a season, and each band one slice of it: a minute of the score, or a matchday of the league table. You pick between four answers, and the wrong ones are real games whose strips look similar.
So it rewards a different kind of memory: which games went to the wire, which teams led from the start, which title race was a runaway. Watching the game helps; reasoning gets you a long way without it.
Four strips for sports fans
- Away Leading
- Tied
- Home Leading
The strip never gets far from white: neither side led by more than seven at the end of any minute, and the lead changed hands twelve times. Close all the way is the shape of a famous game. Finals Game 7s has more.
- Away Leading
- Tied
- Home Leading
The opposite shape. A band reaches full colour at a 17-point lead, so a strip that goes dark early and stays there is a rout. Seventy is the most any team scored in a game in the ten NFL seasons in Huezle.
- Bottom of the table
- Mid-table
- Top of the table
- Bottom of the table
- Mid-table
- Top of the table
Read these two together. In 2014–15 Leicester were bottom of the table after every matchday from the 13th to the 29th before climbing out to 14th. The next season they were top for the last 16 matchdays and won the league. Premier League great escapes collects strips like the first one.
Side by side
| Immaculate Grid | Poeltl | Huezle | |
|---|---|---|---|
| The question | Name a player who fits two clues | Guess the mystery NBA player | Which game or season made this strip? |
| Guesses | Nine, one per square | Several, with feedback | One pick from four answers |
| What it rewards | Knowing rosters and careers | Knowing player details | Remembering how games went |
The sports trivia page covers every sports category, and the biggest playoff comebacks is a good next read. The daily puzzle is free.
Try naming a game from its score alone.
Download on the App StoreFree on iPhoneQuestions
What are some games like Immaculate Grid?
Other daily sports puzzles such as Poeltl, and games that reward a fan’s memory. Huezle draws real NBA, NFL, NHL and Premier League games and seasons as strips of colour and asks you which one it was.
How does the rarity score work in Immaculate Grid?
Each correct answer is scored by how few other players chose the same name, so a rarer correct answer scores better.
Does Huezle ask about players?
No. Huezle strips are games and seasons: the score minute by minute, or a club’s league position matchday by matchday. You pick which of four games or seasons the strip shows.
More guides
- Games like Connections, and one where the pattern is a colour.Like NYT Connections? What makes it work, what to look for in another daily puzzle, and Huezle, where you spot the pattern in a strip of colour made from real data.
- Games like Worldle and Globle, for people who think in maps.Like Worldle or Globle? How geography dailies work, what to look for in another one, and Huezle, where the climates of 193 cities are drawn as strips of colour.
- Games like Framed, for people who know their films and shows.Like Framed, the daily movie-guessing game? What makes film dailies fun, and Huezle, where TV seasons and film careers are drawn as strips of colour by rating.
- The best daily puzzle games for iPhone.A fair guide to well-known daily puzzle games you can play on iPhone, from Wordle and Connections to LinkedIn’s Queens and Apple’s Quartiles, plus Huezle.
Now try naming one yourself.
Huezle is free on iPhone. A new puzzle every day, four categories free forever, and no account, ads or timer.