NUMBER LADDERS · FOR IPHONE
Every card
has to climb.
Four ladders. One rule: a card must beat the one it lands on. Fill a ladder to clear it. Let the high cards box you in, and you're out of moves.
COMING SOON TO IPHONE See the Daily ↓Where does the 7 go?
Three ladders will take it. The fourth is done — almost nothing beats an 18.
SENT HERE BY A FRIEND?
Seen one of these?
That's someone's Daily, told without giving the deck away. Each block is one moment of their run, left to right:
- ▓A ladder cleared.
- █A perfect — four in a row, like 7, 8, 9, 10.
- ░A card burned — thrown away to stay alive.
HOW IT PLAYS
One rule, and its consequences.
Drop
You're dealt a number. Put it on any ladder where it beats the card on top. Empty ladders take anything.
Clear
Fill all four rungs and the ladder clears. Tight runs score more; four in a row doubles it.
Don't get stuck
High cards are the dangerous ones. Drop an 18 and that ladder is finished — almost nothing can beat it.
THE DAILY
One deck a day.
Everybody gets the same one.
Every morning there's a new deck, dealt identically to every player in the world. You get one go at it, so a score means something — and tomorrow there's another.
- One counted go. Practise the deck as much as you like afterwards; only the first run goes on the board.
- A real leaderboard. Every score is checked by replaying its moves before it's accepted. You can't post a number you didn't play.
- A streak for every day in a row you come back.
THE NAME
Hashigo means ladder.
It's also the everyday Japanese term for a pub crawl. はしご酒, hashigo-zake — literally a liquor ladder — is moving from one bar to the next, sampling something different at each. You climb it a rung at a time, and each one is higher than the last.
There's a phrase for when it goes wrong, too. はしごを外す — to remove the ladder — is to cheer someone up onto something and then take away what they were standing on. That's the deck, at about level seven.