How to play Orrdle Journey
A career laid out as a path of teams. Name the player.
Journey turns an NHL career into a path. Each stop is a team and the seasons spent there, in order, from the first game to the last. You get 5 guesses to name whose career it is.
You start with only the first two stops. Every wrong guess unlocks the next one, so the path fills in as you go and the puzzle gets easier the longer it takes you - which is exactly why guessing early is worth so much more.
The path
A mystery player's NHL career is laid out as a path of teams and seasons. Name the player in 5 guesses.
You start with the first two stops of the career. Every wrong guess unlocks the next stop, so the path gets easier the longer you take.
A new career path is available each day.
Stops are franchises, not badges, so a career that ran through Quebec, Colorado and back reads as the moves it actually was, and relocations, the two Winnipeg franchises and Utah's changing names are all resolved to the club that was on the ice that season. A short stop is often the giveaway: a single season somewhere odd near the end of a long path usually means a deadline rental.
Points
The fewer guesses you need, the more you score: 1000 points on the first guess, then 800, 600, 400 and 200.
Every day of your current streak adds a +50 bonus, up to +500.
The streak bonus caps at ten days, so the ceiling for a normal first-guess solve is 1500. Showing up matters roughly as much as being right quickly, which is deliberate - a player who solves on the third guess every day out-scores one who nails it on the first and then disappears for a week.
Hard mode
Think you know the depth chart? Hard mode picks from the players nobody puts on a poster - solid careers, but under 500 NHL games - and shows you only the first stop of the path to start.
Solves are worth 1.5x points. BE WARNED!!! Once you guess on the daily, your choice is locked until the next day.
Hard mode keeps its own global comparison, so the percentage you are measured against is other hard-mode players rather than the whole site. Under 500 games is roughly six full seasons: enough of a career to leave a path worth reading, not enough for the name to be automatic.
Unlimited mode
Can't get enough? Play as many career paths as you want. Unlimited keeps its own score and streak, so it never touches your daily stats.
Unlimited draws at random from the same pool the daily uses, and nothing it produces is submitted anywhere. It is the mode to use if you want to get a feel for how the paths are built before spending a daily on it.
Retro mode
Pick any season back to 1982-1983 and guess among the players who suited up that year. The path still shows their full career, so you may see stops from before and after the season you picked.
Retro is practice - stats aren't recorded.
Because the path is always the whole career, a retro puzzle set in 1994 can show you a stop in 2003. That is a hint, not a bug: it tells you the player was young that season. The division and conference names on each stop are the ones that were current in the season the stop belongs to.
Play it
Open Orrdle Journey. Nothing to install, no account, and a new puzzle every day.
The other games: Orrdle and Orrdle Rush.