How to play Chain

Chain gives you a start number, a target, and a small hand of moves. You reach the target from the start in exactly the number of moves the board shows, using each tile at most once. There is one puzzle a day, it is the same puzzle for everyone, and exactly one set of tiles solves it.

The board

The start is a number between 10 and 99. The target is a number between 100 and 999. Your running value begins at the start and changes with every tile you play; the board keeps it in the highlighted cell so you always know where you are.

The hand holds five tiles on easy and medium days and six on hard days. Each tile is one operation:

• +n adds n (n is between 1 and 99).
• −n subtracts n (1 to 99).
• ×n multiplies by n (2 to 9).
• ÷n divides by n (2 to 9) — but only when the division is exact. ÷3 on 21 gives 7; ÷3 on 22 is not allowed.
• swap digits reverses the digits of the running value and drops any leading zeros. 173 becomes 371; 120 becomes 21; 1000 becomes 1. A hand never holds more than one swap tile, and swap is not allowed when it would leave the value unchanged — 33 stays 33, so the tile is refused.

Two more rules keep the numbers sane. The running value must stay between 0 and 9999, so a tile that would take it outside that range is refused from that position. And no hand holds the same tile twice: you will never see +7 two times.

What counts as a win

The chain ends on the target. That is the whole condition — no bonus for speed, no penalty for thinking.

The number of moves is fixed. The board shows it as a row of small pips: three on easy days, four on medium, five on hard. That count is the length of the shortest solution, and you have to use exactly that many tiles. Playing fewer never ends on the target, and the board counts the chain at exactly that many moves — if the last pip is not the target, that is a try, whatever a sixth tile might have done.

Exactly one set of tiles works. Which order you play them in is up to you — several orderings of the right set usually reach the target, and every one of them counts as solved. The puzzle is finding the set; the order is often a matter of which intermediate values stay in range.

Tries, undo, and reset

When you have played the full number of moves and the value is not the target, that is a try. The board returns to the start, the tiles come back, the working in the margin clears, and the try counter goes up by one. The timer keeps running.

Undo takes back your last move, and Reset puts the whole board back to the start. Both are free — neither one counts as a try. A refused tile (out of range, inexact division, a swap that would not change anything) is not a move at all; the board tells you why and waits.

The timer starts on your first move and stops when you solve. It keeps counting across tries, and if you close the tab and come back later it counts the time in between too. The result shows tries and time; that is what you share.

Playing with a keyboard

Everything on the board works without a mouse.

• Press Tab to reach the hand. The tiles form one group: the arrow keys move between them, Home and End jump to the first and last tile.
• Enter or Space plays the focused tile.
• The number keys 1 to 6 play the tile in that position directly, so a solution is three to five keystrokes once you see it.
• Backspace undoes the last move.
• Every control shows a visible focus ring, and the working — the chain written out in the margin — is read aloud by screen readers one move at a time.

A tile you have already played stays in place but goes hollow with a strike through it, and it cannot be played again until you undo or reset.

Four worked puzzles

These are real puzzles from the daily schedule, shown with one of their solutions.

Easy (Monday 7 September 2026). Start 79, target 160, three moves, hand +65 −28 +55 +54 −36. The target is 81 above the start, so the plan is to overshoot and come back: +54 takes 79 to 133, +55 takes it to 188, and −28 lands on 160. The set is +54 +55 −28 and all six orders of it work, because none of the intermediate values leaves the range. The decoys are there to tempt you: +65 −28 +54 ends on 170, ten away, which is exactly the kind of near miss the puzzles are built to contain.

Medium (Wednesday 9 September 2026). Start 14, target 178, four moves, hand +89 +12 +17 ×5 +79. Four additions cannot get from 14 to 178 with these numbers, so the multiplier has to be in the set. ×5 takes 14 to 70, +17 to 87, +12 to 99, and +79 to 178. Multiply first: ×5 after an addition would need the running value to be a fifth of something reachable, and nothing here is. Try ×5 +89 +12 +17 and you end on 188 — the same shape of mistake, one tile off.

Hard (Friday 11 September 2026). Start 21, target 200, five moves, hand −37 +70 ÷3 +82 +84 +76. The only division has to be exact. 21 is divisible by 3, and so is 21 + 84 = 105 — but 105 ÷ 3 = 35 leaves you needing 165 from three of +70 +76 +82 −37, and no three of them make it. So ÷3 goes first: 21 becomes 7. Then +84 (91), +76 (167), −37 (130), +70 (200). Five of the six tiles are in the set; +82 is the decoy, and playing it instead of +84 or +76 lands you on 198 or 206.

Medium, with a swap (Sunday 13 September 2026). Start 41, target 386, four moves, hand +15 swap digits +92 +40 +14. All four additions together only reach 41 + 15 + 92 + 40 + 14 = 202, so the swap has to be in the set and it has to jump the value into the 300s. The set is +92 +40 swap digits +15, and the swap works from two positions: +92 gives 133, and either swap there (331, then +40 and +15 in either order) or add +40 first (173) and swap to 371, then +15. Four orders reach 386; what never works is swapping before +92, because 41 + 40 = 81 swaps to 18. The near miss is +14 in place of +15: +92 swap +40 +14 ends on 385, one away.

Which days are hard

The difficulty follows the weekday, the same for everyone:

• Monday and Tuesday: easy, three moves.
• Wednesday and Thursday: medium, four moves.
• Friday and Saturday: hard, five moves.
• Sunday: medium, four moves.

A new puzzle appears at midnight in your own timezone. If you want the details of how "today" is decided, the FAQ covers it.

Sharing your result

Solving opens a small result card with your tries, your time, and a Copy result button. What it copies is three lines of plain text — for example:

puzzles chain · 2026-09-07
Solved · 1 try · 1:52
https://puzzles.softaleo.com/

It is text on purpose. It pastes cleanly into any chat, it does not give away the solution, and it does not need an image. The third line is this site's address, so a friend can come and play; when the archive arrives, it will point at that day's puzzle instead.

Once you have the rules down, the strategy guide explains how we find the set quickly — last digits, divisibility, and working backwards from the target. And if something looks wrong on a puzzle, the feedback button in the corner of every page sends it straight to us.