How to play Rank Panic

Every puzzle gives you six cards and one question, like “Rank these mountains by elevation” or “Rank these inventions from oldest to newest”. Drag the cards into order and submit.

Four tries per puzzle

After each try, cards in exactly the right spot turn green, and cards one place away turn amber. You don’t see the actual values until the puzzle is over, so you’ll have to reason from the colours.

Solving on your first try scores 100 points, then 75, 50 and 25. Solve it within 30 seconds and you also get a speed bonus of up to 20 points. If you run out of tries, you still get 5 points for each card your best try had in the right spot.

Ways to play

• Daily five. Five puzzles, the same for everyone that day, worth up to 600 points. When you finish, you can see how you did against everyone else who played and copy your result as a little grid of coloured squares to share.
• Endless. Keep solving puzzles until you’ve missed three. Your best streak is saved in your browser.
• Categories. Endless, but with one kind of topic, like geography, science or sports.
• Battle. Play five puzzles, then send a friend the link. They get the same five cards and see the score they have to beat.

Where the facts come from

Every deck of cards names the source its numbers come from, such as national surveys, Wikipedia lists, NASA or official sports records. You can see them all on the decks and sources page. We also keep the cards in any one puzzle far enough apart that small differences between sources can’t change the right order.

Free to play

Rank Panic is free and paid for by ads. Ads never appear before or during a puzzle, and nothing in the Daily five can be bought or earned by watching an ad. In Endless, you can choose to watch an ad for a fifth try or one more life. See the privacy policy for what that involves.

Contact

Spotted a wrong fact, or have an idea for a deck? Email hello@rankpanic.com.