Kneejerk

How to play

Type any player’s name and pick them from the list. Accents are optional: “Odegaard” finds Ødegaard. Your guess appears as a row of five clues comparing that player with today’s answer.

• MID✓
  Green with a tick: an exact match. Same club, same position, or the same number.
• £7.5m▲close
  Amber, dashed, “close”: not right, but near. The arrow points towards the answer, so ▲ means the answer is higher.
• 61▼
  Grey with an arrow: the answer is lower (▼) or higher (▲), and not close.
• ARS✕
  Grey with a cross: wrong club or wrong position.

Club and position only ever say yes or no, so the three numbers do most of the work. A good opening guess sits in the middle of the range, something like a £6.5m midfielder with average ownership, because whichever way the arrows point you have ruled out half the game. Ownership is the sharpest clue once you are close: very few players share a figure to within two points.

You have eight guesses. When the game ends you see the player, a countdown to the next puzzle and a result you can share without giving the answer away.

Questions

When does a new puzzle start?

At 06:00 UK time every day. That is after Fantasy Premier League applies its overnight price changes and before any match kicks off, so the numbers you are guessing against are settled before anyone plays.

Why did a clue not change when my player scored?

Every player’s price, points and ownership are frozen at the 06:00 reset and stay frozen until the next one. A goal at three in the afternoon does not move today’s clues, which means the first person to play and the last get exactly the same puzzle.

Who can be the answer?

Only players most managers will have heard of: anyone owned by at least 2% of teams or inside the top 50 for total points, who has played this season and has not left the league. You can guess anybody in the game, including players who could never be the answer, if their numbers would narrow things down. The same player will not come up twice within 60 days.

What counts as close?

Within £0.5m on price, within 10 on total points, and within 2 percentage points on ownership. A close clue is amber with a dashed border and the word “close”; the arrow still tells you which way to go.

Can someone find the answer in the page source?

No. The answer is never sent to your browser while you are playing. Each guess goes to our server, which sends back only the five clues for that guess. The player is revealed when you get it right or run out of guesses.

Where are my streak and stats kept?

In your browser’s local storage, on your device, and nowhere else. There is no account. That also means they do not follow you to another phone or browser, and clearing your site data resets them.