Frequently Asked Questions

New puzzles go live at midnight local time. Because the puzzles are generated deterministically from the date, everyone in the same timezone sees the same three puzzles. Players in different timezones see the same daily sequence, just offset.

Three: easy, medium, and hard. If you finish all three, you unlock Expert — a timed version of the hard puzzle with a public leaderboard. That’s up to four puzzles per day.

No. Daily Unfold doesn’t use accounts. Streaks, stars, and tutorial progress are stored locally in your browser. The only server interaction is the Expert leaderboard, which uses a nickname and a random player ID — no email or login.

You’ll lose your streak, your stars, your tutorial-seen flag, and your Expert nickname. Past leaderboard entries remain on the server under the old player ID, but you won’t be recognized as the same player. There’s no way to recover local state across devices.

Yes. The daily puzzles, archive, and Expert leaderboard are all free. The game is supported by ads shown at natural moments — after completing the day’s hard puzzle, when opening the Expert leaderboard, and between archive puzzles. Ads are never shown mid-puzzle or during the reveal animation.

Each puzzle is scored based on how many of your predicted holes match the actual unfolded result. Missing a hole and marking a cell that shouldn’t have a hole both lower your score. You earn 1, 2, or 3 stars. See the How to Play page for the specifics.

Expert mode is a timed version of the hard puzzle that unlocks after you complete easy, medium, and hard for the day. Your time is submitted to a daily public leaderboard. You pick a nickname once, which you can change from within the game.

Yes. Open the Expert leaderboard and tap “Change name”. The new name will be shown on your next submission. Past leaderboard entries keep whatever nickname was used at the time of submission.

No. Streaks are based on completing the current day’s puzzle set. Archive puzzles are for catch-up and extra practice — they don’t extend or protect your streak.

None, functionally. Archive puzzles are exactly the same puzzles that were live on those dates — the generator is deterministic, so the answer for October 4th, 2025 is the same today as it was on October 4th, 2025. Archive does not track streaks and may have ads between puzzles.

Mostly yes. Daily Unfold is a Progressive Web App, so once it’s loaded in your browser it can be added to your home screen and will work offline for puzzles you already have cached. Leaderboard submission requires a connection.

Procedurally, from scratch, every day. A generator picks fold axes and punch positions, simulates the unfold, and scores the resulting puzzle for difficulty. Only puzzles that land in the right difficulty band are kept. The long version is on the blog: Modeling What Makes Paper-Folding Puzzles Hard.

In real life, yes. In Daily Unfold, no — every fold is a “toward you” fold. This removes an axis of ambiguity (“which side is in front?”) and keeps the puzzle deterministic and solvable without guessing. It’s a common simplification in paper-fold puzzles on standardized tests too.

Solve in reverse: start from the punched location, then mentally undo the last fold (reflect across it), then the second-to-last, then the first. Every fold roughly doubles the number of holes. If that doesn’t click, the How to Play page has a fuller walkthrough.

Almost none of your data leaves your device. Anonymous analytics are collected to improve the game, and ads may use cookies per Google’s standard policies. See the Privacy Policy for the full breakdown.

Email mertaslan16@gmail.com with a description of what happened, what you expected, and ideally a screenshot. It’s a solo project — I read everything.