Today's challenges

Every day at midnight UTC three new challenges appear, the same three for every player. One is ancient, one tests a casino skill and one follows a lineage from an old game to its modern descendant. Solve all three and you have had a full day on Ancient Games; solve one and you still keep the XP.

Ancient

One of the ancient games on the site, played against the computer, with a condition attached: win the Royal Game of Ur on Medium or Hard, win Hnefatafl or Shatranj, bring every piece home first in Pachisi, or go deep into today's Bone Poker or Fortuna's Wheel run. The condition is what makes it a challenge and not just a game. A win without it still earns the normal game XP. The ancient challenge pays about 100 XP.

Casino Skill

A session at the craps table or a run of one of the originals, judged on how it ends: finish thirty rolls of craps with more chips than you started with, or beat a set number of opponents in Bone Poker. Craps uses practice chips only, and chance decides much of it, so the casino challenge pays 80 XP, a little less than the other two.

Lineage

Two games from the same line, on the same day: Senet and then the Royal Game of Ur, Ur and then Pachisi, Hnefatafl and then Shatranj, or the knucklebones of Bone Poker and then a session of craps. It is the quickest way to feel how a rule changed over a few hundred years. The lineage challenge pays 120 XP, the most of the three, because it takes two games.

Streaks and sharing

Each day with at least one challenge solved adds to your streak; a day without one ends it. When you are done, the share card shows your three results as a grid of symbols, so friends can compare without seeing the answers. Copy it, paste it into a chat or a group thread, and come back after midnight UTC for the next three challenges.

How the challenges are chosen

Each day draws one challenge of each type from the games you can play here, and no game appears twice on the same day. A challenge is only set for a game whose rules are written out on its page, and its condition is something a regular player can reach in a few minutes. A finished game is checked on the server: it plays your moves again with the same dice, so the result counts only if the game really went that way.

Fair play

Every challenge uses the same dice and the same opponent as the normal game, with no hidden help and no hidden handicap. The dice of a game are fixed by the game's seed, so two players on today's daily game see the same throws. The board in Ur throws four fair pyramid dice, which means a throw of two comes up six times in sixteen and a zero only once. Nothing you can buy changes those odds, because nothing on Ancient Games is for sale: the challenges, the XP and the badges are free, and they stay that way.