How to Play The Chains

The basics

Connect the Start player to the Finish player. Each consecutive pair in the chain (each “link”) must share an NFL team (any season) or a college. Type a name, pick from the suggestions, and keep building. The moment a legal pick connects to the Finish, the chain auto-completes: you never add the Finish player by hand. The full player pool covers every NFL player who appeared in a regular-season game from 1990 to today.

Today's objective

Each day's puzzle carries one objective, stated in plain text above the chain. There are three kinds:

• Position objective (“Every player must be a quarterback”) — every player in the chain, Start, Finish, and everyone between, must fit the stated position.
• Waypoint objective (“Your chain must include a Boise State alum”) — any valid chain works, but at least one connector (not Start or Finish) must match. The detour is real: par is set longer than the free shortest path to account for it.
• Alternation objective (“Links must alternate between a shared team and a shared college”) — the required connection type flips every link, team, then college, then team again, so you have to plan two moves ahead instead of one. A live pill above the search box always shows what the next link needs. A link is whatever connects two consecutive players in the chain to each other, not to the Finish — each new pick only has to share the required thing with the player right before it.

Scoring

Base score is 1000 at par. Every link past par costs −300, down to a floor of 100. A wrong guess costs −50. If no legal move toward the Finish remains, the chain restarts at −150.

Every connector (not Start or Finish) also adds a rarity bonus on top of the base score, based on its tier, summed across the whole chain:

Each connector also adds a small precision bonus (up to +50) based on exactly how rare that specific player is within their tier, so two Rare pulls almost never score identically.

Rarity tiers

Rarity isn't about how famous a player is in general. It's about how surprising it is that you named this person for this specific connection, compared to everyone else who could've legally filled that same spot. Naming a Hall of Famer through a team with three other Hall of Famers can score Common; naming a lesser-known starter through their one quiet team can score Legendary, if they're clearly the most recognizable name that connection had to offer. One exception: names in the very top tier of career fame and real-world recognition never register as a rare pull, no matter how many other stars share that connection. True icons always feel obvious. Rarity is revealed after each pick, as the card's finish:

Hard mode

Hard mode is its own daily puzzle, separate from the normal board. Links require true teammates: a shared NFL team in the same season, not just the same franchise at any point in history. There's no college link, no stated objective, just the shortest legal path across a much deeper graph. Route labels carry the season (“Raiders ’21”) so you can see exactly when two players overlapped. Hard mode has its own once-per-day lock, streak, and leaderboard, tracked separately from normal mode.

Streaks and the leaderboard

Each puzzle resets at midnight Eastern and can only be played once per day per mode; that day's locked result is what counts toward your streak and today's score. Current streak is your run of consecutive solved days; best streak is the longest run you've ever put together; all-time is your cumulative score across every day you've played. Replaying a solved puzzle in Unlimited mode, or using a hint, is practice only, it never touches your streak or any leaderboard. See the leaderboard for global and friends rankings across all four metrics.