Daily Tether
Before you start, pick an era - Modern (3+ seasons since 2009-10) or Throwback (3+ seasons before 2009-10). Every day, one NBA player is chosen, and you get 8 guesses to find them. Every guess you make gives you clues based on the teams and franchises both the mystery player and your guess played for. New puzzles drop daily at Eastern midnight.
Reading your guesses
You found the mystery player.
Your guess played on the same team, in the same seasons, as the mystery player - a chip on the row shows exactly which team and years.
Same franchise as the mystery player at some point, but different years - they were never actually teammates.
Your guess never shared a franchise with the mystery player at all.
Reading the timeline
The timeline is the board. The mystery player's own career sits in a band across the top, and every guess you make adds its own row underneath - lined up so the same season sits in the same column all the way down. Because everything shares that one axis, you can also tell whether a guess's career ran earlier or later than the mystery's just by where its bar sits against the band - no separate era arrow needed.
The mystery's band (top)
A solid gold season - proven the mystery player was active then.
A dashed outline - nobody's guesses have proven that season one way or the other yet.
Empty - your guesses have already proven the mystery player was NOT active that season.
As your guesses (and hints) pin down which team the mystery player was on, and in which years, it shows up as a small pill riding the top edge of the band itself - sized to exactly the seasons that team covers. A team confirmed without known years yet gets its own pill in a separate row below instead.
Every guess is its own row
You and the mystery player were both on the same team that exact season.
You were both active in the league that season, just not proven to be on the same team.
Your guess was active that season, but the mystery player wasn't.
Empty - your guess hadn't entered the league yet, or was already retired, that season.
"X of N teams found" is a deliberate head start, not a spoiler: it tells you upfront how many franchises the mystery player wore a jersey for, so you always know when you've found them all.
The "What You Know" box
This box used to fill in with confirmed teams and years pulled straight from your guesses - that job now belongs to the timeline. What's left here is a running scouting report built purely from the hints you choose to reveal:
- Before you reveal a single hint, the box just points you back to the timeline instead of sitting empty.
- The moment you reveal your first hint, it fills in with the mystery player's draft record (round and pick, or "Undrafted" with their first active season), every position they logged, and any career honors on record - MVPs, All-Star nods, All-NBA teams, and the rest, as count chips like 2× MVP.
- Your second and third hints add more to the board elsewhere - a season-by-season stat line, then the full career timeline with team years filled in.
Hints
A new hint unlocks every 2 guesses. Revealing a hint never costs you a guess - only your bragging rights.
Unlocks after guess 2
Any awards or end-of-season teams the mystery player was ever named to.
Unlocks after guess 4
A season-by-season stat line from the mystery player's career (no teams shown).
Unlocks after guess 6
The full career map: every team the mystery player was on, in every season - the piece the stat line leaves out.
You get 10 minutes - plenty of time to sit back and think it through. But solving it fast is where the bragging rights live: your time goes on your shared score, so try to beat your friends. A warning appears at 9 minutes; at 10 the run ends as a miss.
Solve today's puzzle to start a streak. Miss a day? Freezes bridge up to 3 missed days automatically - and you earn a new freeze every 3 days you play.
The Daily Tether is more than just today's game: replay any past Tether from the Vault, anytime. Vault games don't count toward your streak.