Squad Numbers is a free daily football shirt game in which you are given one club, one season and its ten lowest shirt numbers, and have to name the player who wore each. Guesses are unlimited and a wrong name costs nothing. There are two minutes on the clock, or you can turn it off entirely before you start. Every number on a board was worn by a single player across that whole season: where a shirt changed hands mid-season the number is dropped from the board rather than awarded to whoever wore it most, so no cell here has two defensible answers. Give up and the shirts you did not fill are revealed. A new set of shirts is dealt every day at midnight UTC.
Because the shirt changed hands that season. A January signing inheriting a departed player’s number means the shirt has two honest answers, so the number is left off the board altogether instead of being given to the one who wore it longer. What is left is ten numbers with one owner each — being wrong here means being wrong, not unlucky.
Low numbers are the ones a squad hands to its regulars, so the board is drawn from the players who actually featured rather than from the far end of the squad list. It also makes the boards comparable: every club-season offers the same slice, and difficulty comes from the squad rather than from how deep into the numbering the puzzle reaches.
Two minutes by default, and you can switch the clock off in the setup sheet before the round starts. Once a round is under way the setting is fixed. With the clock off it becomes a slower recall puzzle; with it on, the useful move is to fill the numbers you know instantly and come back to the rest.
No. There is no penalty, no limit and no strike count — a wrong name simply does not stick, and you can try as many as you like on the same shirt. If the clock is running the only cost is the seconds, which is the same trade every timed game here makes.
Work 1 and then the middle of the range: the goalkeeper is nearly always the surest name on the board, and 8, 9 and 10 tend to be the players you would have named for the season anyway.
Starting XI asks for the same season by minutes played, and Squad Rush asks for the whole squad against a ninety-second clock.