The Daily Futoshiki

Today’s grid, at whichever size suits the time you have. It is built from today’s date, which is why yours is the same grid as everybody else’s.

Puzzle #1 Easy Time 0:00 Filled 2/36

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Show mistakesShow the clock

A easy 6×6 grid with 2 numbers given and 13 signs. Pick a cell, then a number — or press the pencil to write candidates.

Check this before you rely on it. This futoshiki generator is provided free and without warranty, and its results are not professional advice.

Your record

—Current streak
—Longest streak
—Days played
—Best time, this size

A daily that no server hands out

There is nothing behind this page to hold a puzzle of the day and give it out on request. The calendar date does that job instead: it becomes a number, the number drives every choice the generator makes, and the same number therefore produces the identical Latin square, the identical signs and the identical carve on any machine running this code — with no coordination and no request.

A consequence worth stating plainly is that tomorrow’s grid already exists and anyone who changes their clock can have it. There is no secret being kept here and pretending otherwise would be theatre. The compensation is that no past grid can ever be lost, which is what makes the archive on this site a real archive rather than a list of links that will rot.

All of it happens on your own machine, in a background thread, in a few milliseconds. The grid printed into this page was built when the site was last deployed; if you have arrived on a later day your browser quietly rebuilds today’s instead, because a generator that is a function of the date does not need permission from anybody to do that.

The futoshiki week peaks on a Thursday

Difficulty follows the weekday, read in UTC so that everybody turns the page at the same instant. Monday and Friday are the gentle days here, Thursday is the wall, and Wednesday and Saturday sit in between. Sunday and Tuesday are the middling ones.

The shape was picked against the other two puzzles rather than copied from either. All three sections ramp from gentle to demanding and all three peak on a different day, so somebody working through everything on the site meets one puzzle they can finish and one to grow into on most mornings, instead of three walls on the same Sunday. It is the only piece of editorial coordination between the sections and it costs nothing but the bookkeeping.

Size is a separate choice and does not touch the difficulty. A 9×9 on an easy day is eighty-one cells of straightforward crossing out; a 4×4 on a Thursday is sixteen cells and a genuine fight. Pick the size for the time you have and the day for how hard you want to be made to think.

What the streak counts, and what a hint costs it

Finishing any one size records the day. Playing all six does not record six, there is no table to climb, and the number is only a record of having turned up — which is the one honest thing a daily can measure about anybody.

A hint names the argument it used and links to the page that explains it, so taking one is the site doing its job rather than a failure on your part. It does not break a streak. It is also not hidden from the share text: the result you copy says how many hints you took, because a time set with five hints and a time set with none are different results and quietly conflating them would make the number meaningless.

The clock can be switched off entirely if being timed spoils the puzzle for you, and the setting sticks between visits. Your streak, your history and your best time at each size live in this browser’s local storage, are never transmitted anywhere, and vanish for good if you clear site data for this domain.

Common questions

Is the daily futoshiki the same grid for everyone?

Yes. It is derived from the date rather than delivered from anywhere, and every step of the generator is deterministic, so the same date and size produce an identical grid in every browser.

Does taking a hint end my streak?

No. Only whether you finished counts. The hint names the technique it applied and links to the page teaching it, which is the whole reason the button exists.

Why is the daily sometimes a moment late appearing?

Because it is being built rather than fetched. The generator carves a fresh grid and grades it, and any that misses its level is thrown away and another carved, so your browser may make several before one is fit to publish.