How to play Pecking Order
Pecking Order is a daily ranking puzzle with a deliberately mean oracle. Six things arrive with one stated measurement — countries by land area, countries by population, the elements by atomic weight, solar-system bodies by diameter, or US states by population — and you stack them biggest at the top. You get three attempts, and each one is answered with exactly two numbers: how many rows are in the right place, and how many of the five gaps between the six rows have the bigger one on top. Never which. That thinness is the point. Three attempts is not enough to deduce the answer from a standing start, so what you already know about the subject is what turns a guess into a solve.
How to play
- Read the measurement first. It is stated above the board, and it decides everything.
- Stack the six rows biggest at the top, using each row’s Move up and Move down buttons.
- Start from what you are sure of. Getting two or three obviously-different rows in roughly the right region is worth more than a neat guess at the whole thing.
- Submit, then read both numbers. Rows in place is the harsher one; gaps the right way round moves even when no row is exactly right.
- Change several rows between attempts, not one. With only three goes and no per-row feedback, a single swap usually buys too little.
- Solve it inside three attempts to win. The real order and the actual figures are revealed when the round ends.
Tips & strategy
- The gaps number is the more forgiving signal: it can move even when no row is exactly right. Four of the five gaps with nothing in place is a strong position — your ordering is almost there and the whole stack is out of step, so try lifting the bottom row to the top or dropping the top row to the bottom.
- Zero gaps right is the best news you can get. It means every neighbouring pair is the wrong way round, which can only happen if your stack is exactly upside down — so reverse it and you have the answer.
- Five gaps right never appears on its own: if all five neighbouring pairs are correct the whole order is correct, so that attempt is the win.
- Rows in place can never be five. If five rows are right the sixth has nowhere else to be, so a five would be a six.
- A big gap between two figures is worth trusting; a near-tie is not. Days are built so the obvious comparisons really are obvious and the close ones really are close.
- Ignore how famous something is. The measurement is the measurement, and the surprises are the whole reason the puzzle works.
- Practice roams all five subjects, so it is the fastest way to learn which ones you are good at before the daily counts.
Accessibility
Nothing in Pecking Order is carried by colour, because there is nothing per-row to colour: the feedback is two counts, so the board never knows which row or which gap is right and never pretends to. Each row states its name, any context and its position out loud, and each of the five gaps is a named object — "gap 2 of 5: you have Chad above Peru" — so the phrase "3 of your 5 gaps" always refers to something you can find. The whole game plays with the Move buttons alone: no dragging, keyboard everywhere, 44-pixel targets, and one polite announcement after each move and each attempt rather than a running commentary.