Whose Career
A real career, drawn season by season. Whose is it?
How to play Whose Career
- Each day has one real career, drawn season by season on a chart: the stat, the years and every season's number, but no name.
- Guess who it is: type any player. Every miss adds a clue: the career total, the club they started with, every club they played for, their initials, then their first name.
- Six guesses. Pass to see the next clue (it costs a guess). Name them in fewer guesses to rank higher.
Tips
- Read the chart before you guess: the first and last seasons give you the era, the number of seasons how long they lasted, and the peak how good they were.
- Make every guess one you'd be glad to be right about. A miss shows the next clue either way, so there's no reason to throw away a name.
- The club clues come in order: the club they started with, then every club they played for. A one-club career narrows it fast.
- Basketball lines are per game and the other sports are season totals, so a dip in a basketball line is a real drop, not missed games.
Worked example: a strikeout line with a cliff
A real pre-launch board: strikeouts pitched, 2010 to 2022, thirteen seasons. No name, just the line.
Read the shape before the numbers. The line starts at 92, drops to 24 in year two, then runs from 155 to 251 for eight seasons, peaking in 2019. After that it falls off a cliff: 2, 21, 5.
| Seasons | Strikeouts | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| 2010-2011 | 92, then 24 | A big debut, then most of a year lost: an arm injury |
| 2012-2019 | 155 to 251 | An ace, and the best year last: 2019 |
| 2020-2022 | 2, 21, 5 | A career that ended almost overnight |
Let the clues narrow it. If no name comes, a pass or a miss adds the career total (1,723), then the club they started with. Here that’s the Washington Nationals, 2010 to 2022, and the next clue says it was their only club.
A Nationals ace from 2010 to 2019 whose 2019 was his best season, and whose arm gave out right after: Stephen Strasburg, the 2019 World Series MVP. The initials (S. S.) would settle it, but the shape and one club are already enough.
Questions
- Which players?
- Career Arc's: careers that began in 2000 or later with at least five seasons in the stat, the top 5% of those by career total. Baseball, football, hockey and soccer lines are season totals; basketball's are per game.
- Can I guess anyone?
- Yes. The search has every player in the sport, not just the ones a board can be about, so it never narrows down to the answer.
- Where do the clubs come from?
- Teammate Chain's rosters: every club the player was on in a regular season, in order. A player traded mid-season is on both clubs that year, and soccer counts clubs in Europe's top five leagues.
- When does a new puzzle come out?
- Every day at midnight Pacific time. Everyone in the world gets the same puzzle, so you can compare results with friends.
- Can I play past puzzles?
- Yes. Every past day is in the archive. Sign in with a free account to play the last 7 days, or go Premium for every past puzzle. Archive games don't count toward your streak or the daily leaderboard. Replay a day as often as you like: the archive keeps your best score.
Something else on your mind?