How to play Plinkle

Plinkle is a free daily puzzle. Everyone in the world gets the same board, you get five balls, and there are no take-backs. A new board arrives at midnight, your time.

The rules

1. Drop a ball down any chute. The ball lands on a flipper and rolls off its low end. Blue flippers send the ball left. Orange flippers send it right.
2. Every flipper the ball touches flips. Blue becomes orange and orange becomes blue, so the next ball down the same chute takes a different road.
3. Grey ramps never move. They are bolted down and always send the ball the same way.
4. Score the cup the ball lands in, plus 30 points for every star it knocks loose on the way down. Each star can be collected once.
5. The last ball is gold and counts double, stars included.

Scoring and medals

Plinkle works out the best game that is possible on each board by checking every sequence of drops. Your result is your score as a percentage of that best game.

• 💎 Perfect: 100%. Nobody can beat you on that board.
• 🥇 Gold: 90% or more.
• 🥈 Silver: 75% or more.
• 🥉 Bronze: 50% or more.

After you finish you can watch the perfect run, share your result as a grid of squares, and try the board again for practice. Only your first attempt counts.

Strategy

• Trace backwards. Start from the biggest cup and work up: which flippers currently lead into it?
• Think one ball ahead. The best cup right now is often the wrong choice. A ball that scores little can flip the board into a better shape for the next one.
• Protect the gold ball. The last ball counts double, so the strongest games usually set up a route to the top cup, with a star or two on the way, for the final drop.
• The same chute never repeats. A ball always flips the first flipper it hits, so the next ball down that chute goes the other way at once.

Difficulty through the week

Monday and Tuesday boards are gentle: looking two balls ahead is enough to find the perfect game. Wednesday and Thursday are tricky and need three. Friday to Sunday are fiendish.

Questions

Is Plinkle free? Yes. The daily board, your stats, sharing and the last week of the archive are free. Plinkle Plus is a one-time $5 purchase that adds a second, larger board each day (the Big Drop), an endless mode, the full archive and extra themes.

Is there any luck? No. Nothing is random once the board is dealt. Everything that will happen can be read from the board.

When does the board change? At midnight in your own time zone.

Do I need an account? No. Your progress is kept in your browser.

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