How to Play.

One round per day · two seconds · your gut

countle has one rule. Look at the dots. Guess how many there were. Submit. The game tells you how close you got. That's the whole loop.

The setup

When you press play, a field of dots flashes onto the screen for two seconds, then disappears. You type how many you think were there into the input box and submit. The game then shows you the actual number, your error, and your score for the round.

Why two seconds

Two seconds is just long enough for your eye to take in the whole field, but not long enough to count individually. That's by design. countle tests intuition, not arithmetic. If we gave you ten seconds, the game would reduce to "how fast can you count," which isn't interesting.

How scoring works

Each round is scored from 0 to 500. The closer your guess to the real number, the higher you score. Get it exactly right and you get 500.

The error is measured on a logarithmic scale — meaning being off by 5 when the answer is 10 hurts more than being off by 5 when the answer is 200. This rewards precision more at smaller numbers, which matches how human perception actually breaks down. We talk about why on the Science page.

One round per day

The puzzle resets at midnight UTC. Everyone in the world gets the same dots on the same calendar day. This makes leaderboard comparison fair — you and your friend in another country are looking at exactly the same problem with exactly the same two seconds.

No, you can't replay today's puzzle for a better score. That's the point. One shot, no second chances.

The leaderboard

After your round ends, you can submit your score and a chosen name (12 characters max) to today's leaderboard. The leaderboard resets daily — there is no global all-time leaderboard. Fresh slate every day.

If you'd rather not submit, you don't have to. The score is just for you.

Tips, sort of

Don't try to count. Once you start counting, the timer is gone. Trust your gut.
Look at density, not individuals. "Looks like roughly 4 of these clusters" multiplies faster than "1, 2, 3, 4..."
Use a reference. Calibrate against something you know — "I'm pretty sure that's around 50, and this looks like double" — and round.
The full field is bigger than it feels. Most players underestimate. If your gut says 70, the answer is often 90.
Don't overthink. Your first guess is usually closer than your "corrected" one.

Mobile and desktop

countle works on phones, tablets, and desktops. The dots are sized to feel similar across screens, but the visual experience is naturally a little different on a small phone versus a 27" monitor. The puzzle itself — the count and the timing — is identical.

Discord Activity

If you launch countle from a Discord voice channel, the game runs as an Activity inside Discord. Your guess stays private until you submit, and the leaderboard is scoped to that server — only the people in your server see each other's scores. The daily puzzle is still the same as on the web.

Sharing

After your round, you can save a shareable image of your score. Square format for feed posts, vertical Story format for TikTok and Instagram Stories. The image shows the day, your score, and your rank — but not the answer, so you don't spoil it for friends who haven't played yet.

That's the whole game. See you tomorrow.