Zonkey
zonkey.io
Meet in the middle. A mobile-first daily word-convergence game against an AI.
You and the AI each pick a word connecting two endpoints. Different words become the next guess's endpoints; matching words connect. From guess 2 onward, equivalent meanings also connect.
Daily, Archive, and Unlimited all have three independent rounds with up to five guesses per round. Players enter their own word first; Zonkey's preset word is revealed only after submission. This is guess 1; exact opening matches earn 1,000 points. Otherwise the two words become the next pair and convergence proceeds normally. Connecting on guesses 1–5 earns 1,000 / 800 / 600 / 400 / 200 points; an exhausted round earns 0. Always continue through all three rounds for a total out of 3,000. Everyone faces the same three preset words for a Daily date, including historical dates. Later AI commitments are shared for identical date/round/guess/endpoint states. Unlimited selects three fresh random or themed words per game. The catalog has 1,365 words and 6,924 distinct pairs.
Daily streaks count consecutive UTC days where the player finishes that day's puzzle before midnight. Wins and losses both count. A streak ending yesterday remains current until today's deadline; missing a day resets the current streak while preserving the best. Existing on-time completions count automatically. Home, Daily results, and Daily scores show both current and best streaks.
Archive is the third mode beside Daily and Unlimited. It opens a month calendar with a list of that month's past puzzles underneath. Unplayed dates can be played; completed dates show the saved score and reopen the result; unfinished dates resume their saved game. Saved player-first Daily results appear alongside Archive attempts, including dates older than the recent-scores list.
Every published date, starting September 30, 2026, is playable in the player-first three-round format. Puzzle numbers are preserved and each date has three hidden preset words. One run is saved per player/date and can be resumed. Unlimited runs have separate IDs and can be restored with /?run=ID. Archive and Unlimited runs do not count in live Daily distributions or streaks. Previous format records remain stored without assigning invented scores, but cannot be played or resumed through the app.
After finishing all three Daily rounds, a curve plots actual player counts at every attainable score (0–3,000 in 200-point steps), with your score highlighted and counts included in the chart's screen-reader description. It does not fit a synthetic normal distribution. “You did better than X% of players” compares strictly lower scores among other completed live Daily runs for that date. Ties are not beaten; your own run is included in the chart but excluded from the percentile. The percentage rounds down; the first finisher sees a waiting message. Archive, active, and previous format results are excluded.
Database rollout and backfill
Apply migrations in order through 20261009120000_scored_player_first_modes.sql before deploying this app version. The additive migration uses private scored_* tables and RPCs for all three modes; existing records remain intact for rollback and on-time streak history. Previously committed player-first puzzle definitions are copied without replacing their words. Only the server's service role can access state, AI commitments, and aggregates. Database row locks and expected round/guess numbers make retries and concurrent submissions safe. A request UUID makes Unlimited creation retries reuse the same run.
20261022020000_three_round_modes.sql converts every scored puzzle and run to three rounds. Each date keeps its first three preset words; saved runs keep their round 1–3 results, and finishing round 3 completes the run. Rounds 4–5 are copied to private scored_five_round_* tables before removal. During rollout, the database stores only the first three words if an older deployment sends five.
With SUPABASE_URL and SUPABASE_SERVICE_ROLE_KEY set, run npm run backfill:daily for a dry run, then npm run backfill:daily -- --apply to seed three player-first opening words for every published date through the private seed_scored_puzzle RPC. It only inserts missing definitions and is safe to repeat; it never overwrites a puzzle or changes player results. New dates commit their canonical words when first played.
Run npm run test:db against local Supabase to test both stores, including the three-round atomic state transitions and database permissions. It uses credentials from the local Docker containers and never prints or persists their signing keys.
Play
Play Zonkey.
Vercel creates a preview for each pull request; the deployment link appears on the PR and may require Vercel sign-in.
Discoverability
The landing page includes server-rendered how-to and FAQ content, with matching FAQ and VideoGame JSON-LD. Keyword-focused titles, descriptions, canonical URLs, and the zebra Open Graph image use https://zonkey.io.
/daily provides the Archive calendar, with past dates available from September 30, 2026. Month navigation shows older puzzles and the current day's puzzle stays in Daily mode. Each /daily/YYYY-MM-DD page shows its puzzle number and player-first instructions without exposing preset words. The play button opens /?daily=YYYY-MM-DD to start or resume that puzzle, or view an existing result. The server rejects invalid, pre-launch, and future dates; the corresponding archive pages return 404.
/sitemap.xml lists the home page, archive, and published dates. The archive and sitemap render on request so each new UTC date appears without a rebuild. /robots.txt allows public pages and excludes API routes.
Stack
Next.js (App Router) · TypeScript · Tailwind CSS 4 · shadcn/ui · Supabase · OpenAI · Vercel
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