Seeker: Hide and Seek

A fox is hiding in the garden. Catch it. SEEKER is hide and seek on a 9×9 board of moonlit flagstones. Tap a square to put a lantern down. You have five. A lantern glows when the fox is in one of the eight squares around it, corners included, and never the square it stands on. A dark lantern rules those eight out, which is just as useful. Hold a square before you place and you see the eight it would watch. Then you have three moves, four on Hard. Pick a lantern up and put it down somewhere else, with a tap or a drag. Every report still counts after its lantern has moved on. Land a lantern on the fox and you win on the spot: 5,000 points, more than any other ending can pay. Out of moves, or sure of yourself early? Name the square you think it is under. A correct name is a good finish, but it is not the catch. ONE GARDEN A DAY Everyone gets the same hiding place, worked out from the date. Nothing is downloaded, so it plays in aeroplane mode. Catch the fox or name its square to keep your streak going. Skipped a day? Every past daily is in the archive: catch the fox on a day you haven't finished, or name its square, and that day counts towards your streak. SCORING YOU CAN READ The scoring table is one tap away during play and on the result. When you name a square, the result lists every line, including the ones that paid nothing. • Caught: 5,000, and the round ends there. • Lanterns lit: 100 for every lantern lit when your fifth goes down. • Right square: 500. • Unused moves: 150 each, with the right square. • Proven: 1,000 for naming the only square left. NORMAL OR HARD Normal shows how many squares the fox could still be under, and the optional Mist settles on every one of them. Turn the Mist on in a daily and the Proven bonus is gone. Hard names blind: no count while you hunt, no Mist, and nothing shown when you name a square. To make up for it, Hard gives you four moves instead of three on the 9×9 board. Same garden, same scoring, and Stats keeps your record on each. BIG BOARD A 10×10 garden with five lanterns and ten moves, dealt fresh each time you finish one. It keeps its own best score and never touches your streak. TWO PLAYERS One of you hides the fox on a 9×9 board and hands the phone over; the other hunts. Then swap roles. Nothing is recorded. STATS AND SHARING Streak, best streak, rounds played, how often you solved and how many you caught, a calendar of the month, your last fourteen days and how your scores are spread. Share a daily as a grid of lit and dark lanterns with a picture card. It gives nothing away. AN EASY START A short tutorial in a small walled garden teaches placing, reading, moving and naming. Skip it if you know how to play, and replay it any time. YOUR ROUND WAITS Leave a daily, Big Board or two-player round and it is kept exactly where you left it. Optional reminders, one each day at a time you choose and one on an evening when your streak is about to end, are set on your iPhone itself. NOTHING COLLECTED No account, no ads, no analytics, no purchases and no network requests. Your results stay on your phone. Sound and haptics can each be switched off. A game by The Question Assembly. Make your call before the answer.