Saturday, 17 October 2026
Land nearer than anybody else to two thirds of the average of all the numbers picked. Not the highest number and not the lowest: the one that guesses what everybody else will do.
With people
No puzzle of the day
Two Thirds is played against the room rather than against a board. There is no arrangement to work out and no answer to find: what you are reading is the other players, and on your own there are none to read. So it has no daily, no streak and no place on the daily board, and it lives in a lobby instead, which is where it is one of the best things here.
Two Thirds
Land nearer than anybody else to two thirds of the average of all the numbers picked. Not the highest number and not the lowest: the one that guesses what everybody else will do.
- Pick a whole number from 0 to 100.You can move it as often as you like before you lock it in. Only your last choice counts.
- Lock it in.Then, and only then, you see the field, the average and the target. It cannot be shown first: two thirds of a number you can already see is arithmetic, not a game.
- Read the ledger.Here is what people get wrong. The clever answer is 0, because if everybody plays perfectly that is where it settles. Against real people it loses badly, every time, because most of the field stops after one or two steps of the reasoning and the target lands in the twenties.
Scored on miss.A lobby game. There is no puzzle of the day.
What the words mean
- The field:
- the other numbers you are averaged with. In a lobby they are the room, and nothing about them is known until everybody has picked; on the practice page they are 24 dealt from a seed, so that playing alone has somebody to be average with at all
- The average:
- every number picked, added up and divided by how many there are. Yours counts
- The target:
- two thirds of that average. It is not known until everybody has picked, which is what makes this a game
- Your miss:
- how far your number was from the target. Small is good, and nought is perfect
- Equilibrium:
- the number you reach by assuming everybody reasons for ever, which is 0. It is the correct answer to a maths question and the wrong answer to this one