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How to play Code Cracker

Goal

A secret code of coloured gems is locked inside the vault. Work it out in as few guesses as you can. Every gem colour also has its own shape (circle, triangle, star, diamond, square, hexagon, cross, heart, moon), so you can play without telling colours apart.

How a guess works

• Fill a row with gems and press Crack. The vault answers with markers:
• Bright marker — one gem is the right colour in the right place.
• Dim marker — one gem is the right colour but in the wrong place.
• The markers don't say which gems they mean — that's the puzzle. A colour can appear more than once in the code.

Marker key

Ways to play

• 🔐 Solo — one code. Pick the vault: Classic (4 gems · 6 colours · 10 guesses), Hard (5 gems · 8 colours · 12 guesses) or Expert (6 gems · 9 colours · 12 guesses).
• ⏱ 3-minute Heist — Classic codes one after another. Each crack gives you time back — 10 seconds for the first, one second less for each one after (never under 3, and 2 minutes in all at most); a code you run out of guesses on (or skip) costs 20 seconds.
• 📅 Daily Code — the same code for everyone today: Classic on weekdays, Hard at the weekend. Only your first try counts for the daily leaderboard — it counts from your first guess, so stopping and starting again only gives you a practice game. Afterwards, 📋 Copy result gives you a row of markers for each guess to share — no colours, so no spoilers.
• 🍻 Same screen — two players on one device. One secretly sets a code (the other looks away!), then hands over the device to be cracked; then swap. Over 2 or 4 rounds, the fewest guesses in total wins (a code that isn't cracked counts as all the guesses + 2). A tie goes to the quicker cracker.
• ⚔️ Battle — 2 to 4 players crack the same code at the same time. Challenge someone, open a table, or play ⚔️ vs 1–3 🤖 computer players (Rookie to Phantom). The round goes to whoever cracks it in the fewest guesses — if that's a tie, the quickest. Best of 3 rounds. You see how many guesses your opponents have made and their markers, never their gems. A round lasts at most 4 minutes (Hard 6, Expert 8).

Controls

• Tap a gem in the palette to put it in the next empty slot — or drag it onto any slot. Tap a slot to empty it (and fill that one next).
• Long-press or right-click a palette gem to mark it ruled out (a note for yourself; tap the same way again to undo).
• Keyboard: 1–9 pick colours, Backspace removes the last gem, Enter cracks, ←/→ move between slots, P or Esc pauses (solo games).

Scoring

• Classic: 1,000 for a crack + 150 for every guess you didn't need + a speed bonus of up to 600 (it runs down to nothing over 2 minutes).
• Hard: 2,000 + 200 a spare guess + up to 1,000 for speed (over 4 minutes).
• Expert: 3,000 + 250 a spare guess + up to 1,500 for speed (over 6 minutes).
• Heist: 1,000 + 150 a spare guess for each code, and every crack in a row adds 10 % more (up to +50 %).
• An uncracked code scores nothing. Your best scores are kept on this device, and signed-in players go on the leaderboards.

Tips

• Start with two colours in pairs (like 🔴🔴🔶🔶) — it tells you a lot about both.
• No markers at all? Every colour in that row is out — long-press them to rule them out.
• Before each guess, check it fits every answer so far. A guess that can't be right wastes a row.

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