How Plottr works
The basics
- Seven clues every day, each describing one place on Earth.
- Read the clue, then tap the globe where you think the place is.
- The closer your pin lands, the more it scores.
- A new round opens at midnight, wherever you are.
- Everyone gets the same seven clues on the same day, so scores compare directly.
Two games, one rulebook
Plottr has two games, and this page is the rules for both. There is one scoring system to learn, not two: the same scale, the same multipliers, the same markers and the same rating, from seven clues and one round a day in each. One account plays both.
What differs is only this:
| History | Cricket | |
|---|---|---|
| The clues | Moments from the world's past | Matches, milestones and grounds |
| On the globe | Country codes | Country codes, plus grounds |
Each game is ranked on its own board, so a strong week at one never flatters the other.
The one rule that exists in cricket and not in history is the ground markers. When a cricket answer is a ground, the clue says so, and every ground the game knows is already drawn on the globe as an unnamed marker, and your job is to pick the right one. When the answer is a birthplace, a town or anywhere that is not a ground, no markers are drawn at all. So a marker never means “the answer is here”, and an empty globe is telling you something too.
One tap commits your guess
There is no submit button and no way to change your answer. Drag to spin the globe and pinch to zoom as much as you like. Only a tap that stays still counts as a guess. Once it lands, the globe turns to show your pin beside the real place, with how far off you were and what the guess was worth.
How each tap is scored
Every clue is worth up to 100 points, and the only thing that matters is how many miles your pin is from the answer. The scale is strict close in and forgiving far out: knowing roughly which country it happened in is not enough, but a guess on the wrong continent still scores something, so a bad start never ends the round.
| Miles off | Points |
|---|---|
| 0 | 100 |
| 25 | 96 |
| 70 | 90 |
| 150 | 82 |
| 300 | 71 |
| 600 | 58 |
| 1,000 | 48 |
| 3,000 | 30 |
| 6,000 | 22 |
| 12,000 | 16 |
Why later clues are worth more
The stakes rise as the round goes on. The last clue is worth 4 times the first, so where you finish decides far more than where you start. Here is the whole ramp.
- ×1first
- ×1second
- ×2third
- ×2fourth
- ×3fifth
- ×3sixth
- ×4seventh
Seven perfect pins is 1,600 points, and that is the highest a round can go.
What the markers mean
Each guess gets a marker for how close it landed. These are the markers that go into the result you copy and share.
- On the site, within about 75 miles.
- Right region, within about 924 miles.
- Wrong country, within about 2,925 miles.
- Off the map, further out than that.
The leaderboard
Playing needs no account. Signing in adds two things: a record of your rounds, and a place on the boards: history and cricket. There is no form and no password. Type your email address, enter the six-digit code Plottr sends you, and you are in. You stay signed in for a week, longer if you keep playing.
Your rating is the mean of your best 30 rounds out of the last 90 days, and you appear once ten of them are in that window. The best-of-30 is deliberate: one brilliant day should not park somebody at the top of the board for three months, and one bad day should not cost you a week. The 90-day window is what makes the board about current form rather than about who started first. Each game is rated separately, from its own rounds.
A run counts consecutive daily rounds: the 5th and the 6th is a run of two. It is counted on the rounds, not on the days you opened the game, so it never depends on what time of day you play or where you are.
A new round every day
The round changes at midnight where you are, not at midnight somewhere else. A clue about the second of October should reach you on your second of October, and you should not be waiting until breakfast for a day that has already started.
Everyone who plays a given day gets the same seven clues, so scores still compare directly. The day simply reaches the world in the order the world wakes up. Your shared result gives away the scores but never the places.
Tips
- Drag to spin the globe, pinch or scroll to zoom. Neither counts as a guess.
- Changed your mind mid-tap? Drag a little before you let go. Small movements are read as a swipe, not a guess.
- Refresh mid-round if you need to. Your progress is kept on your device.
- Clues describe a place, not a date. If the clue names a city that has been renamed, plot where it is now.
- Zoom in before you commit. Two places in the same city are a long way apart at the scale the score is measured on.
Where the map comes from
The globe is not ours. The satellite imagery is Esri’s and its providers', including Maxar. The borders, place names and label fonts come from OpenStreetMap contributors via OpenFreeMap, and the region outlines from Natural Earth. All three are used under their own licences, and none of them endorses Plottr.