How the honest board works
Most puzzle leaderboards believe whatever number your browser reports. Ours doesn’t — every rated time has to survive four checks on the server.
- The clock is ours, not yours. Your solve is timed between the server seeing you press Start and the server receiving your finished puzzle. The time your browser reports has to agree with that window — closely.
- Your solve replays. Every keystroke, found word, or piece join is logged as you play. The server replays that log and checks it actually reconstructs your finished puzzle — a pasted-in solution has no believable history.
- The rhythm has to be human. A script can type a grid in a blink; people can’t. Input pacing that’s implausibly fast fails the check.
- Time only moves forward. Replays with rewound or reordered timestamps are rejected.
A solve that fails any check still counts as a finish — it just shows on the board marked unverified, with the reason kept on file. Flaky wifi can do it; tomorrow’s solve clears it.
What this buys you: when you see ✓ next to a coworker’s 4:12, they really typed it in 4:12. Argue about the clue, not the clock.