There is a new door in the Puzzles menu today, and it is the biggest thing I have added to this game since launch.
Cribbage Crossroads is a crossing-card puzzle. You get a five-by-five board with one card — the Anchor — already sitting on it, and sixteen cards face up in front of you. You place cards one at a time, each one touching what is already down, and every line you build counts like a cribbage hand.
That is the easy part to explain. Here is the part I actually care about.
It scores twice, because cribbage scores twice
Cribbage has always had two scoring phases. There is the play, where points come and go in the moment, and then there is the show, where you count what you kept. Every card-grid puzzle I have ever seen only does the second one. This one does both.
The Play. Every card you put down pegs immediately, along its row and its column. Touch a matching rank and that is a pair. Land a card that completes a run through it and you take the run. Bring a line to exactly fifteen — or exactly thirty-one — and take two.
The Show. When you are ready, you press Count. Every line of two or more cards scores as a full cribbage hand with the Cut as its starter: fifteens, pairs, runs, flushes at four cards or more, his nobs. Fill an entire line of five and that is another five points. Then the crib counts, last, the way it always does.
And because the Play is judged at the moment each card lands, the order you build in is worth points. This is not a flourish. Lay a 7, then an 8, then a 9 across a row and you collect the 7-8-9 run and the fifteen you passed through on the way — five points. Lay the 8 and the 9 first and bridge them with the 7 afterwards, and you end up with the identical board and three points. Same cards. Same squares. Two points different, because of the order.
The Cut is hidden, and then it is everywhere
You toss two cards to a crib before you place anything — a real crib, which counts at the end with the Anchor and the Cut, so the toss is a genuine decision and not just a discard.
The Cut itself stays face-down until your seventh card lands. Then it flips, and from that moment it counts as the starter in every line on the board. If it is a jack, that is two for his heels.
One catch, and it is deliberate: the seven cards already on the board are set for good. You can undo freely before that and freely after, but not those. I tried it the other way first, and free undo turned out to be an exploit — lay seven throwaways, read the Cut, take it all back and rebuild knowing everything. That is not a puzzle, that is a peek. The cut is cut, and the first seven timbers are set. Build an opening that holds up whatever turns over.
Braced squares
Some squares on the board carry a brace, marked in the corner: 15, PR or RN. A card sitting on one doubles that one kind of thing at the Show — its fifteens, its pairs or its runs. Route the right rank through the right square and a decent line becomes a very good one.
Braces never touch the pegging. The Play stays clean.
Sixty puzzles, and one a day for everybody
The bank ships with sixty puzzles, each one priced by a solver rather than by me guessing. Every puzzle has a par, and the medals hang off it: reach half of par for bronze, three quarters for silver, nine tenths for gold. Match the solver and you have got the Twenty-Nine.
There is also Today's Crossroads, which works the way the Daily Deal works. The same cards and the same board for every single player in the world that day, with its own leaderboard. Nothing is downloaded to make that happen — the puzzle is derived from the date itself, by the same arithmetic on every machine, which is why it cannot drift between platforms or arrive late.
And when you finish, the Muggins Report tells you what you left behind: the best card you never played and what it was worth, what stayed in your hand, and the solver's own total so you know exactly how far off you were.
How to play, in eight lines
If you would rather read it in the game, there is an eight-step How to Play on the Crossroads screen with a board diagram. The short version:
The board is 5×5. One card, the Anchor, is already down.
Every card you place must touch the formation. Dark squares are barriers — nothing goes there, and lines stop at them.
You get sixteen cards, all face up from the start. Send two to the crib before you place anything.
Each placement pegs on the spot, along its row and its column. Pairs by touch, runs through the card, fifteens and thirty-ones.
On the seventh placement the Cut flips, and those seven cards lock.
Braced squares — 15, PR, RN — double that one thing at the Show.
Press Count when you are ready. You do not have to place everything.
Every line of two or more counts with the Cut. Five in a line is a bonus five. Then the crib.
One more thing, in the Leaderboards menu
Both solitaire puzzles now have their daily boards reachable from the main menu. Cribbage Squares and Cribbage Crossroads sit under Daily, next to the Daily Deal and the Discard Drill, with the same date pager for looking back at closed boards. Until now the only way to see either board was to finish that day's puzzle and scroll past your own score, which is a strange way to run a leaderboard.
Go and break it
I am fairly confident in the counting. I am much less confident about the feel. The Cut flips on the seventh card because seven felt right; it could be five, it could be nine. The medals are set off a solver that plays better than I do. Sixty puzzles is where the bank landed, not where it has to stay.
So play a few and tell me. If a puzzle in the bank feels impossible, tell me its number. If the medals are too tight or too loose, tell me that. And if you find a line I did not think was reachable, I would love to see it.
Thanks, as always, for playing.