Daily Salami

About Daily Salami

Daily Salami is a browser puzzle about cross-sections. Every day the game picks one 3D object, a real model of a thing such as a fish, a cup or a chess pawn, and never shows it whole. Instead a flat cutting plane passes through it and you see only the face the cut leaves: a disc, a ring, an odd outline. Your job is to work out what the object is and type its name.

You play in up to four turns. On the first you can only slide the object back and forth through the cut with a slider or by dragging, watching the slice grow, shrink and change shape. A wrong guess, or a skip, uses a turn and unlocks more freedom: turn 2 adds tilting and turn 3 adds spinning, so you can cut the object from other angles. Resetting the view is free. When you solve it, or run out of turns, the whole model is shown along with its credit, and you can share a row of four squares showing which turn you got it on.

The puzzle comes from the server by date, so everyone gets the same object that day, and each comes with a difficulty level. The models are Creative Commons works, credited in the menu once you have finished. There are no accounts and no ads; your progress is kept in your browser. A short tutorial explains the idea on a first visit.

It suits players who like naming things from partial views, as in Wotsthat or Cardle, and anyone who enjoys turning a shape over in their head.

How to play Daily Salami

1. Open dailysalami.com and read or skip the short tutorial.
2. Look at the 2D slice in the middle; it is the face left by a cut through today's object.
3. Use the slider, or drag, to move the object through the cut and watch how the slice changes.
4. Press Guess and type what you think the object is, or Skip to trade the turn for more movement.
5. From turn 2 you can tilt the object, from turn 3 spin it; you have four turns in all.
6. When you solve it or run out of turns, see the whole model and share your result.

Screenshots

Tips

• Sweep the slice slowly from one end to the other before guessing: how it grows and shrinks says more than any single cut.
• A ring rather than a solid disc means the object is hollow at that point, like a cup or a pipe.
• Skipping on turn 1 is sometimes worth it to unlock tilting, which shows a side profile.
• Use reset if an angle gets confusing; it costs nothing.

Questions