Trickwork Tower

What is Trickwork Tower?

Trickwork Tower is a puzzle game built on trick-taking card games: whist, hearts, spades, exact-trick games like Oh Hell, and the card play of bridge. Each puzzle is a small ending, two to seven cards in each hand, with a goal at the top of the table. Win 4 of the 5 tricks. Take no points. Win exactly 2. Win a trick with the 2 of clubs.

Every card is face up, the way composed card problems have been printed for more than a century. The automatons you play against see everything too, and they always defend perfectly. So a puzzle is solved only by a line of play that works whatever they do. There is no luck and no guessing, just card play.

Every puzzle in the game was checked by our solver before it went in. That means each one can be won, and at the key moment there is one real way through, so the answer feels fair when you find it. It plays in your browser on a phone, tablet or computer.

How to play

You are South, at the bottom of the table. Tap a card to play it, or drag it to the middle. Cards that can't be played right now are dimmed. On partnership puzzles your partner Pip sits at the top with a face up hand, and you choose Pip's cards too, just like declarer and dummy in bridge.

How a trick works

Each player plays one card, going clockwise. You must follow the suit that was led if you can. If you can't, play anything. The highest trump wins the trick; with no trumps in it, the highest card of the suit led wins. The winner leads the next trick.

The rule families

Controls

On a keyboard, the arrow keys choose a card and Enter plays it. U takes back your last card, H asks for a hint and R starts the puzzle again.

Take backs, hints and the slipping gear

Because the solver knows every position, we can tell the moment a card you play turns a winnable hand into a lost one. A gear on the goal banner cracks and the Take back button glows. If you would rather find out the hard way, turn the warning off in Settings.

Hints come in three steps. The first names the idea (a finesse, a ruff, a squeeze), the second tells you which suit and which hand to play from, and the third lights up the card. When a puzzle ends you can watch the winning line with a caption on every trick, and the game tells you which trick was the key one.

The Tower: sixteen floors of technique

The main game is a climb through sixteen floors. Each floor opens with a short guided lesson where the host walks you through one hand card by card, then nine puzzles that start gentle and get tough. Solve five on a floor to open the next one.

1. Follow Suit
2. Trumps
3. Ducking (hearts)
4. Win and Unblock
5. Exactly (exact tricks)
6. Spades, with breaking spades and Nil
7. The Finesse
8. Long Suits
9. Shoot the Moon
10. Entries
11. Short-Hand Ruffs
12. Hold Up
13. Timing
14. The Throw-In
15. The Squeeze
16. The Clock Face, where every technique comes back

Each lesson adds a page to your Notebook explaining the technique in plain words. Solve all ten on a floor and its host gives you a keepsake for your Cabinet. The big clock on the title screen lights a stud for every finished floor.

Scoring and stars

A puzzle solved with no take backs, no restarts and no hints earns three stars. One take back or just the first hint still earns two. Anything more earns one, and so does solving after watching the solution. Your best result is kept, so you can always come back for the third star.

Stars open new tables: Walnut Study at 30, Midnight at 90, Rose Velvet at 160, Brass Workshop at 250 and Sea Glass at 360. Milestones also unlock card backs that are shared with our other card games.

The Daily Trio and the Exhibition

Every day there are three new hands, the same for everyone: a gentle one, a medium one and a tricky one. They are worth 300, 500 and 800 points. Each take back or restart takes off 15 percent and hints take off 20, 35 or 60 percent depending on how far you go, but a solved hand never drops below 40 percent of its value. A quick solve adds up to 60 bonus points.

Your total goes on the daily leaderboard once all three are in, and only once. Replays after that are practice. Finishing the trio keeps your daily streak going, and one missed day a week is forgiven. Each week there is also an Exhibition of five themed hands, such as Hearts Week or Partners Week, with a medal for each and a blue ribbon for all five.

Tips and strategy

• Count before you play. In every suit, work out which cards are winners right now and which hand they are in.
• Ask who will be on lead after each trick. Most puzzles are really about getting the lead into the right hand at the right time.
• Play high cards from the shorter hand first, so a winner never gets stuck and blocks your long suit.
• Lead toward the card you hope will win. A Queen is worth a trick if the King has to play before it.
• Ruff in the hand with fewer trumps. Trumps in the long hand win anyway, the short hand's trumps are the extra tricks.
• Losing a trick can be the winning move. Ducking keeps a link to your long suit, and holding up an Ace cuts the opponents off from each other.
• In hearts, win the early tricks that have no points in them while you can, and keep a low card to get off lead later.
• When nothing else works, look at one opponent who is guarding two suits. Run your winners and make them choose.

Questions