digit.party

digit.party is a small, quiet puzzle about placing numbers. The game deals you digits from 1 to 9 one after another, and each must go on an empty square of a 5x5 board. You always see the digit in hand and the one after it, but nothing further. Whenever two squares holding the same digit sit side by side, they are joined and score that digit's value, so a pair of 9s is worth more than a pair of 2s. The board fills up quickly, and every placement trades grouping what you have against leaving room for what might come.

The daily board uses a sequence seeded from the UTC date, so everyone gets the same digits in the same order. When the board is full the game shows your score against the best possible score for that sequence, which turns a casual game into a precise target. The next day a panel shows how the previous day's scores spread across all players and what share of them you beat. The days are numbered from 3 April 2023, and the history screen keeps your results, your average and your daily streak.

The game was made by Robert Brignall and Vince Vatter, and its about screen credits the idea to Neighbors, a pencil-and-paper game from Ben Orlin's book Math Games with Bad Drawings. The site marked its 1001st day with a redesign. The look is plain, with each digit in its own colour, there are no ads and nothing to sign up for. It suits players who like quick optimisation puzzles in the vein of 2048 or Threes, but with a fixed daily target to chase.