How to play
- Start typing the name of any NBA player and choose it from the list.
- A row of clues appears, one for each column: Team, Position, Country, Height, Birth year,
Debut year.
- Green means an exact match on that column. Yellow means close, in the way that column's
theme file defines close. Arrows on any numeric column point toward the answer.
- Use the clues to find today's mystery NBA player within eight guesses.
Every clue is text: a column name and a color.
The pool spans NBA history, not just this season's rosters, so your guesses need to cover decades of players, not only the names on the floor today.
Reading the columns
- Team
- Position
- Country
- Height, with the arrow pointing toward taller or shorter than your guess.
- Birth year, with the arrow pointing toward older or younger than your guess.
- Debut year, the season the player's NBA career began.
A yellow tile is not a miss, it is a narrower kind of hit. Treat it as a nudge in the right direction rather than something to ignore on your next guess. An arrow on a numeric column is worth just as much as the color next to it: it tells you which direction to move your next guess, not only that your last one was off.
Not every guess needs to be a name you are confident about. A guess made purely to test a column, one you do not expect to be right, can still be the most useful move in the game if it splits the field in half. That is the same idea behind a strong opening guess in our letter games, just applied to columns instead of letters.
A smart way to start
Open with a player near the middle of the height range. It splits the Height column either way the arrow points.
Use Position before Team. Guards, forwards and centers cluster differently on Height, so use both together.
Birth year and Debut year tend to move together, so pairing them narrows fast once you have one.
Save a guess for the split. With two or three names left that fit every clue, pick the guess that would tell them apart, not the one you are most hoping is right.
Why guess from clues
This works the same way as our word games, just with different tiles. Instead of letters, each guess tells you something about the answer through columns fans already understand. Fans of NBA history who track its eras and legends closely will often finish in three or four guesses. Casual players can still win with steady guessing. Players who know the subject well tend to finish in far fewer tries.
Daily and unlimited
The Daily NBA player is the same for everyone today and counts toward your all-games streak. When you finish, share a grid of colored squares that shows how you got there, without naming the answer.
Unlimited picks a new NBA player each time you finish. It never touches your streak, so it is a good way to learn the columns before you rely on them in the daily.
More ways to play
- Guess the NFL player if you have not tried our flagship guessing game.
- Games like Wordle for the full list of what we make and what else is
out there.