Is it for me?

Club 42 packages up lots of the 4Sums puzzles, the board game and a new grid idea into one game. It’s designed for players who already know the puzzles, so it’s not really one for beginners: get the hang of each puzzle on its own first.

Try the tutorial first

The Tutorial button on the start screen walks you through the grid on a practice party: tracing a word, checking it, and one word in each kind of sector. Nothing in it is saved.

The aim

Reach the end tile before the midnight tournament. You arrive at the club at 10pm, so you have two hours to get there. The route is one unbroken chain of 42 four-letter words through all 127 squares of the 8 × 16 grid: word 1 has to make 1, word 2 has to make 2, and so on up to 42. Win stars on the way: they put you on the leaderboard and carry on into the tournament that follows.

A new party every day

Club 42 changes every day, and everyone gets the same party. Your progress is saved on this device until the next day’s party opens, so you can close the game and come back to resume. It is cleared as soon as the new party is available, and also if you clear your browser’s cache or site data in the meantime. The party clock only runs while the game is open.

Your invitation

A host invites you with a puzzle. It stays open all night: tap ✉ to work on it. You hand it in at the end tile and earn stars for however much of it you have done. The host who sent it also sets the type of your first few words (polyglot, cipher, multiplier or standard).

The grid

The five black numbered tiles each start a challenge puzzle when your chain reaches them. Four hosts and three other guests wander the grid and stop you with more. Each tile and person carries a type: 🌐 polyglot (any of twelve languages), 🔑 cipher (a scrambled alphabet), × multiplier (every target is multiplied) or ● standard.

Checking each word

When a word’s four squares are filled, a box opens: first it checks the word is real, then you pick + − × ÷ between the letters so the total is the word’s number (usual order of operations). Letters count A=1 to Z=26, unless the word is polyglot or cipher.

Your notebook

Every word you lock, every word you find in a puzzle, and every word of another guest’s trail that you cross goes in your 📓 notebook. Search it any time: here it takes the place of the helper tools.

The midnight tournament

The midnight tournament is either the board game or Lingo bingo, and your invitation tells you which before you decide to play. In Lingo bingo all eight players get a 4 × 4 card of numbers and a word is called to everyone; cross off any number it can make. Before each round everyone chooses how much to bet, from 2 to 8 stars (the computers bet according to their personalities): the first line wins 10% of the pot, the first two lines 20% of the rest, and the full house takes the remainder and ends the round. After four rounds the four players with the most stars play one final game with no bets, and the first full house wins. In the board game all eight players sit down at a double board: four rounds played for stars, with a pot, tile stakes (several stars can go on one tile) and a different board each round, then a final for the four players with the most stars. The richest player chooses the board and, in round 1, whether the tournament is played in teams of two (each host paired with a guest, partners on different boards, stars pooled, either partner can claim with their combined counters) or free-for-all. That choice holds for all four rounds; the final is always free-for-all. The computer players have personalities: impulsive ones stake more and pile stars onto single tiles.