Jinxed Game Rules & Scoring
One little curse. A bigger combo. A single shield.
Time, rounds, and modes
Each game has three 30-second rounds. Pause freezes your timer; opening help or statistics also pauses an active round. Daily resets at 00:00 UTC and can be replayed. Practice generates a new seed. Friend challenges reproduce the shared seed and prompt order.
Base points and House picks
Common answers earn 100 base points, Uncommon 200, Rare 350, and Legendary 500. These are curated difficulty labels, not population statistics. The House picks seven unique answers before each round. Every tier can be picked. Each individual Legendary answer has a lower selection weight than a Common, Uncommon, or Rare answer.
Combo multipliers
The first three clean answers earn their base points. The fourth eligible answer receives 1.25 times its base points. After six clean answers, the seventh gets 1.5; after nine, the tenth gets 1.75; after twelve, the thirteenth and later answers get 2. Multipliers are capped at 2. Scores are rounded to the nearest whole point.
What breaks a combo?
An unshielded House match earns half the answer’s base points, receives no combo bonus, and resets your clean streak to zero. Previously earned points are retained. Invalid answers and duplicate aliases neither add to nor break the streak. A new round resets the streak; your best streak remains recorded for the game.
One shield per game
Arm the shield before submitting an answer. The next valid, unique answer consumes it whether or not the House chose that answer. If it is a House match, the shield blocks the penalty, applies your normal combo multiplier, and extends your streak. Invalid or repeated guesses do not consume the shield. You can disarm it before submitting. An armed but unspent shield carries into the next round.
Friend challenges and trust
Links contain rules version 2, a seed, three prompt IDs, and a target score. These values reproduce the challenge locally, without rooms or a server database. Both players receive the same prompt order, House picks, timing, and shield allowance. Scores are self-reported and can be edited in a link; there is no anti-cheat claim or public ranking. Invalid or incompatible links show a message and allow normal daily play.
The discovery journal and side quests
New, accepted answers earn 20 XP once per category and enter your local journal. Repeating an answer on another day can count toward that day’s different-answer goal, but does not award discovery XP again. Completing a game earns 30 XP. Three daily side quests each award 40 XP once per UTC date. Levels and achievements are separate from game points and do not change friend challenge scores. Only completing the current day’s Daily mode advances the daily streak; practice, friend games, and same-day replays do not add streak days.
Local records and version changes
V2 scores use localStorage key jinxed-solo-v2. The new multipliers make v1 and v2 scores incomparable, so v2 starts a separate set of records. Existing v1 records are left untouched under their old key. Completed daily replays, practice games, and friend challenges all count as completed v2 games.