How to Play
Grid
Not available for Premier League or MLS -- there isn't enough per-game stat and draft data for those leagues to build a full 9-cell grid with real variety.
A 3x3 grid where each cell needs a player who satisfies both its row and column criteria at once. One guess per cell -- it locks in immediately, right or wrong. Unlike the other modes, there's no chain or streak mechanic here: it's nine independent, simultaneous puzzles that happen to share a board.
Rules
- Every cell needs a single player who satisfies BOTH its row criterion and its column criterion simultaneously -- a player who fits only one side doesn't count.
- One guess per cell, no retries -- a wrong guess locks that cell as wrong for the rest of the day, so there's no way to try again on a cell you've already answered.
- Get all 9 cells correct for a perfect day; there's no mistake budget beyond that -- every cell is scored independently.
- Criteria can be team-based (played for a specific franchise), stat-based (a career threshold), or draft-based (a round or pick range), and any of these can appear on either a row or a column.
Tips
- Start with the cells where the row and column criteria feel most restrictive together (e.g. a specific team plus a high stat threshold) -- those often have fewer valid answers, so nailing them first narrows your thinking for the rest of the grid.
- Before submitting, explicitly check your guess against both axes -- it's easy to satisfy one criterion confidently and forget to verify the other, especially when the two criteria are conceptually unrelated (a team and a stat threshold, say).
- A draft-round criterion is about recall, not fame -- don't skip a cell just because the round number doesn't ring a bell; think through who was actually drafted in that range rather than reaching for a famous name.
- Team criteria often have far more valid answers than stat or draft criteria -- if a cell pairs a team with a narrow stat threshold, treat the stat side as the real constraint and use the team only to double-check your final answer.
- If you're stuck on one cell, working the surrounding cells first can jog a name loose -- players who fit a team criterion on one axis sometimes come to mind once you've already been thinking about that team for a neighboring cell.
Common Mistakes
- Locking in a great player for one axis without double-checking they also clear the other axis's threshold -- a guess that's obviously right for the row can still be wrong for the column.
- Missing that a stat-threshold criterion is a career total, not a single-season number -- a guess can fall just short of a career threshold even if they had one huge season that would have cleared it alone.
- Burning a guess on a hard cell before working out the easier, more constrained cells first, which wastes the context those easier cells could have given you.
- Forgetting that a locked-in wrong cell can't be retried -- there's no benefit to a fast, low-confidence guess on a cell you could still think through.