Design notes
How EmberMosaic clues and scoring work
EmberMosaic is designed as a fast deduction loop. The goal is not to reward random brute force. The goal is to make every guess teach the player something visible and actionable.
Clue logic
Each guess is compared against the hidden five-tile target in two passes. Exact slot matches are marked first as Locked. Then remaining unmatched guess tiles are compared against the remaining unmatched target tiles to assign Warm where appropriate. Any unmatched tile left over becomes Ash.
Why all targets use unique tiles
The MVP deliberately avoids repeated hidden tiles so the clue language stays readable, quick to learn, and easy to QA. That gives the product a strong browser-first daily ritual while leaving room for a future hard mode with duplicates.
Score model
- Solving on the first guess: 132
- Each extra guess used before solving: -22
- Unsolved boards score from the strongest clue row observed: 8 points per locked tile and 4 points per warm tile, with a minimum of 6
This creates exact deterministic QA targets such as a first-guess perfect solve at 132 and a near miss with three locked plus two warm at 32.
Daily mosaic
The daily board is generated from the current UTC date using a deterministic seed. Every player who opens EmberMosaic on the same UTC day gets the same hidden target and tile order.