How to play the NFL games
What the tiles and clues mean, how a guess is judged, and when the puzzle changes.
What are the AllStar Grid NFL games?
They are free guessing games about American football players and teams. Each page hides a player; you get eight guesses, a row of comparison tiles after every guess, and extra clues you can reveal. Every fact comes from a public roster dataset.
Reading the tiles
Each guess gets a row of tiles, one per fact. Green means the fact matches the hidden player. Orange means close: the same division, the same side of the ball, or a number, height, age or draft year within a small range. An arrow on a number tile points toward the answer: up means the hidden player's value is higher.
What each clue tells you
Clues are ordered from the one that gives the most away to the one that gives the least. When you are stuck, revealing the next clue is usually better than guessing at random.
| Clue | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Team | Which squad the player is on now. The strongest single clue. |
| Position | The job they do. Narrows a roster of eighty to a handful. |
| College | Where they played before turning professional. |
| Jersey number | Useful if you already have a candidate in mind. |
| Draft year and round | How long they have been in the league, and how they arrived. |
| Experience, height, birth date | The fine detail that separates two similar careers. |
Worked example
The same clue set the game uses, computed at build time from the public roster dataset.
| Clue | Value |
|---|---|
| Position | DB |
| Team | New York Giants |
| College | Pittsburg State (KS) / Southern Illinois |
| Jersey number | #36 |
| Experience | 1 season |
| Born | 1999-11-28 |
| Height | 6'0" |
| Answer | Rico Payton |
How a guess is judged
A guess is correct when it matches the player's surname on its own, or their full name. Capital letters are ignored, and so are accents and punctuation — so a missing apostrophe or an unaccented letter will not cost you the answer. This is deliberately generous: the game is about knowing the players, not about spelling them.
How to play the NFL games: questions
What are the AllStar Grid NFL games?
They are free guessing games about American football players and teams. Each page hides a player; you get eight guesses, a row of comparison tiles after every guess, and extra clues you can reveal. Every fact comes from a public roster dataset.
What do the clues mean?
Each clue is a real fact about the hidden player: the position they play, the team they are on, the college they attended, their jersey number and the year they were drafted. The team clue is usually the easiest and the draft round is usually the hardest.
Do I have to type the full name?
No. The surname on its own is accepted, so "Nacua" is as good an answer as "Puka Nacua". Capital letters, accents and punctuation do not matter, so you will not lose because of an apostrophe.
When does the daily puzzle change?
At midnight UTC, for everybody at the same moment. The puzzle is worked out from the date, so every visitor sees the same player on the same day, and tomorrow brings a different one.
What does hard mode change?
Hard mode removes the two clues that give the most away — the team and the jersey number. You are left with position, college and draft year, which is enough to work it out but takes longer.
Can I play more than once a day?
Yes. Unlimited mode gives you a new player every round instead of one a day, and it is not tied to the calendar at all. The daily puzzle stays available so you can compare your result with everyone else.
Is there an app to install?
No. Everything runs in your browser, on a phone or on a computer. There is nothing to download and no account to make.