The Ball Grid

The Ball Grid takes the sports grid format and narrows it to one Premier League season per board. That season is the whole world of the puzzle: a player only counts if they met the criteria in that season, so a striker's 20 goals from another year do nothing for you.

Columns are usually clubs, either by name (Arsenal, Aston Villa, Chelsea, Everton, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United, Newcastle United, Tottenham and West Ham) or as groups like Big Six, Top Half or Bottom Half clubs. A player qualifies for a club if they made a Premier League appearance for it that season, so a January signing can fill two club columns. Rows cover goals and assists, cards, clean sheets, minutes played, position, height, age and nationality. Each player can be used once per grid.

There are two grids a day. In the Classic Grid you have unlimited time and wrong answers cost nothing; each correct answer scores from 20 to 100 points depending on how rarely other players picked it, so an obscure name is worth far more than the obvious one. Rapid Fire uses the same format against the clock: there is no rarity bonus, and every wrong answer adds a five-second penalty to your time.

Every past grid stays online with a page showing its categories, every valid player for each square, how often players got each square right and that day's top ten scores. Player data is compiled per season from public Premier League records, and each grid is checked before it goes live so that every square has a reasonable number of answers.