What is FlagGrid?
FlagGrid is a three-by-three geography puzzle where column and row headings describe flag properties instead of countries. Each cell sits at the intersection of two conditions—such as "Triangle on Hoist" and "Flag includes black"—and your job is to name a country whose flag satisfies both. Correct answers reveal the actual flag image and country name in that cell, gradually building a wall of flags you assembled yourself.
How to play FlagGrid
- Pick any cell and read both the column heading and the row heading that meet there. You can start wherever you feel confident.
- Click the cell to open the country-guess box with an autocomplete dropdown. Select a name from the list, then press Guess to submit.
- Continue filling cells until you complete all nine or press Give up, then check Show stats for your summary and feedback.
Why the shared guess pool matters
You have fifteen guesses for the entire board, rather than fifteen per cell. This shared limit prevents brute-forcing a single square and makes you spend your certainties first. The design rewards a broad flag inventory over simple recall: knowing what the Czech flag looks like is useless unless you can also identify which other flags share a hoist triangle. The Most Popular Answers panel at the end shows whether you found the obvious choice or the one nobody else thought of.
Reading the feedback
Right answers display the flag image and country name immediately. Wrong answers produce no message and only tick the guess counter down, leaving you to work out which condition you broke. After finishing or giving up, the Game Summary panel shows a grid of green ticks, your total games, wins, current and max streak, and a Most Popular Answers board that reveals the flag everyone else put in each cell. Seeing the crowd fill a slot with Cuba while you wrestled your way to something obscure is the real scoreline.
Modes
Daily grid: The numbered board everyone receives, one per day, feeding the leaderboard with fifteen shared guesses.
FlagGrid unlimited: Unlocked by the Play flaggrid unlimited button on the finished board when nine cells are not enough.
Leaderboards: Daily, weekly and monthly rankings listing player names, rank titles such as Explorer, and scores. Set your display name through Update User in the settings gear.
Tips and strategy
Spend certainties first. Because fifteen guesses are pooled across nine cells, one confident answer banked early is worth more than a clever guess that might cost two attempts.
Treat exclusion criteria as gifts. A heading like "Flag excludes yellow" rules almost nothing out, so pair it with the harder condition and let that one do the work.
Open the Categories Atlas before guessing. It distinguishes terms the game genuinely separates, such as "One Vertical Stripe on Hoist" versus "Vertical Stripe on Hoist," or "Three Horizontal Stripes" versus "Three Equal Horizontal Stripes." These distinctions will cost guesses if you assume.
Remember criteria are not all about design. The atlas also carries Region, Total Area, Time Zone and Population, so a board can ask you to satisfy a flag pattern and a demographic fact at once.
Scoring and guess count
You start on 100 points. The first guess is free. Guesses two to four cost 5 points each, five and six cost 7, seven onwards cost 10, with a floor of 30. A streak adds three points per consecutive win plus ten more for every ten in a row. The board displays "Guesses left: 15" and the counter falls by one on each submission across all nine cells, so trust the counter rather than older panel text that mentions twelve per cell.