Named

Guess a familiar four-to-seven-letter first name each day in six tries. For a second daily challenge, try the optional Obscure puzzle. No letters are revealed before the first guess.

Named uses a quiet pearl backdrop, white/clear glass panels, dimensional tiles, and mobile sheets. Correct and misplaced letters are white on green/yellow; unknown and absent letters stay dark. Smoked glass is an optional slightly darker neutral treatment. The rounded Fredoka wordmark font is self-hosted under the license in fonts/OFL.txt, with no external font request. Add the site to the iPhone Home Screen for the standalone layout; safe-area spacing and reduced-motion preferences are supported. Existing Given saves and invite links continue to work at the same URL.

Play locally

npm test
python3 -m http.server 4173 --bind 127.0.0.1

Open http://127.0.0.1:4173/

Deploy on Vercel

Static HTML/CSS/JS with one serverless endpoint for the friends board. The game itself needs no environment variables. The board uses the free Upstash for Redis resource linked to the Vercel project, which injects KV_REST_API_URL and KV_REST_API_TOKEN into Preview and Production. Do not commit either value.

1. Import this repo in the Vercel dashboard (or run npx vercel while logged in).
2. Framework Preset: Other (framework is already null in vercel.json).
3. Build command: node tests/engine.test.js (runs the engine tests).
4. Output directory: . (project root).
5. Root directory: repository root. Leave install empty if asked; there are no npm dependencies.

After the first deploy, the game is at https://<project>.vercel.app/. Share that URL. HTTPS is required for clipboard copy.

Rules

• 6 guesses at a first name. The official daily varies from four to seven letters. Obscure is five letters; unlimited unranked practice can be set to five, six, or seven letters in Settings.
• The board starts empty; every guess must be a real first name matching that round’s length.
• Bright green means the right spot, yellow means the wrong spot, and gray means the letter is absent (including duplicate-letter handling).
• There is one official daily and one optional Obscure puzzle per local calendar date. A missed day is replaced by the new names; an open tab refreshes the active daily at local midnight. Only the official daily affects streaks and the friends board. Obscure progress is saved separately on the device.
• The official daily uses the existing answer sequence through September 26, 2026, so games already in progress and leaderboard results remain valid. From September 27 onward it selects a length with a date-seeded draw weighted by published U.S. births for familiar names of each length, then selects from that length's shuffled name pool. The same date always gives the same length and answer on the client and server. Familiar answers have at least 150,000 published U.S. births for that spelling, or a peak of at least 2,000 births in a year since 2010. Brandon is eligible. The optional Obscure pool has 5,000–19,999 total recorded births, excluding familiar answers. These are selection rules, not a measure of every culture's familiarity or the current living population.
• After a finished round, Play another name starts an unranked practice round with a different answer at the selected length. Changing the length applies to the next round and does not erase the current board. It does not reset the shared daily or its friends-board score.
• Existing in-progress official games keep their saved answer and submitted guesses. Completed games and scores remain intact.

Play with friends

Everyone on the same local calendar date gets the same numbered daily. After you finish, Share result sends or copies a spoiler-free grid and a link back to the game:

NAMED 266 3/6

🟩⬛🟨⬛⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

https://namedgame.com

The trophy button opens a friends board. Create an eight-character code or join one from a friend's link, choose a nickname, and finish the official daily puzzle. Scores rank by fewest guesses; losses show X/6. Obscure and practice rounds do not count. Codes are unlisted, not a privacy or identity guarantee. There is no login, so this is for friendly competition, not a cheat-proof public contest. A device can post once per group per day; entries expire after 90 days. The score endpoint replays submitted guesses against the official daily puzzle and never returns the answer.

Accounts (optional)

Play never needs an account. After a finished daily, a soft "Save your streak" ticket offers Sign in with Apple; signed in, stats, streak, freezes and friends boards follow the player to any device. The API (api/account.js, one function behind the /api/account/* and /api/config rewrites) is specified in docs/accounts-api.md. The web button stays hidden until the APPLE_SERVICES_ID env var exists; Apple token revocation on account deletion needs APPLE_SIWA_KEY_ID, APPLE_SIWA_KEY and APPLE_TEAM_ID and is skipped without them.

Name notes

Statistics → Daily name history keeps the official daily list from September 26, 2026 onward, newest first, with expandable name facts and 30-day pagination. Past days appear even if you missed them; today appears only after finishing the official puzzle. It is reconstructed from the date-stable schedule, not browser storage, so clearing saves does not erase past names. Future pool/seed changes must preserve this historical schedule (version new schedules by start date rather than rewriting old pools).

After a name is revealed, the result view shows a short fact from the Social Security Administration's national baby-name files. Counts sum the published female and male birth records from 1880 through 2025 for that exact spelling. They are recorded births, not the current number of living people with that name, and exclude name/sex/year entries below the SSA's five-birth publication threshold. A missing count is shown as missing data, not as zero people.

To refresh the checked-in compact data file after obtaining SSA's names.zip:

node scripts/build-name-notes.mjs /path/to/names.zip
node scripts/build-answer-pools.mjs
npm test