Leaderboard Refinements, Scores to Beat, and Goodbye Checkmarks

A round of refinements to the leaderboards area of the app — plus a small visual cleanup on the grid itself.

Your Rank on the Current (or Most Recent) Puzzle

We now show your performance rank on the current — or most recently completed — puzzle in leaderboard form. We held off on this until enough puzzles had enough players to make per-puzzle ranks genuinely interesting. That bar has been cleared, and seeing exactly where you landed against everyone else who solved the same grid is a lot more fun than a raw score in isolation.

A "Score to Beat" on Puzzles Others Have Solved

The same shift unlocks a small but motivating addition: when a puzzle has already been solved by other players, we surface a "score to beat" right alongside it. You always knew your own number — now you know the number you're chasing.

Smarter New-Puzzle Selection

We've tuned the "new puzzle" process to favor grids that other players have already solved. That means more puzzles with a leaderboard waiting, more scores to beat, and more head-to-head context out of the gate. Don't worry — the CrossEights archive holds more than 24 million puzzles, so there's no risk of running thin.

Leaderboards for Any Puzzle You've Solved

You can now pull up the leaderboard for any puzzle you've previously solved, not just the most recent one. Curious how you stacked up on that tough one from last week? It's one click away.

Cleaner Head-to-Head Rival Play

Rivals got another pass: more performance improvements and clearer rankings so that wins, losses, and ties read at a glance.

Retiring the Green Checkmarks

We removed the small green checkmarks that used to appear on the grid next to correctly solved words. When we asked players about them, the most common reaction was: "What checkmarks?" — a pretty clear signal they were visual clutter rather than useful feedback. The grid is calmer without them.

We love hearing from players. Please share your thoughts, complaints, and ideas for improvement — every one of these changes started with a player telling us something.