How this works
It is a calculus game. A problem appears, you type the answer, and it is either right or it is not. No multiple choice to guess your way through, no hints, no partial credit for effort.
An asymptote is a line a curve gets closer and closer to and never actually touches. That is the whole idea. There is no final level, no ending, no point where you have finished. You just get closer.
Pick how you want to suffer
Sprint
5 minutes on a clock. Mechanical problems only, nothing that should take you more than about 25 seconds. Your score is how many you got. Difficulty climbs as you go and stops at 7.
A strong student lands 12 to 15. Be honest about which one you are.
Diverge
No clock at all. The difficulty climbs every three problems and it never stops. There is no top. Your score is the deepest one you actually solved, not the deepest one you saw.
This is the only place titles come from.
Both modes end after 3 strikes. You do not need an account to play either of them.
Type the answer however you like
There is no secret format to guess. It reads LaTeX, plain text and most things in between, then checks your answer numerically rather than by string matching, so any correct form of the answer is correct.
All of these are accepted
- 8x^3 + 4x + 1
- 8*x**3+4*x+1
- 1 + 4x + 8x³
- dy/dx = 8x^3 + 4x + 1
- \frac{8x^3+4x+1}{1}
Things that will not cost you
- Caps lock. Spaces anywhere. A trailing full stop.
- A + C on an integral, even though you were told not to.
- Anything unreadable. That is not a wrong answer and it does not take a strike.
And there are keys for the characters your phone buries three taps deep:
Do the daily, it is thirty seconds
One problem a day, and everybody in the world gets the same one. No timer, no strikes. The XP drops with every wrong attempt, from 250 down to 175 and then 125, so first try is the only try that really counts.
It also keeps your streak alive, which is the cheapest possible way to not lose one. New problem at midnight UTC. It needs an account, because it pays real XP.
Go and do today'sLevels: the number next to your name
Everything you do pays XP. Every level costs exactly 1,000 XP, and it never gets more expensive. The 400th level costs what the 1st did.
Where XP comes from
- 10 for each problem solved
- 2 more per difficulty step of the ones you solved
- 4 a minute while you are actually playing
- A quarter extra on ranked runs
- Up to 250 for the daily
- Everything 2× all weekend, for everybody
Where XP does not come from
Money. There is no XP pack, no boost, and no subscriber multiplier. The number next to your name means exactly the same thing whoever is wearing it, and it is going to stay that way.
Your badge changes colour and symbol every 100 levels. The symbols are the maths itself, climbing from arithmetic to calculus:
Level 1,000 is a moving gradient and an infinity sign. Nobody has one.
Titles: earned by going deep
Five of them, all from ranked Diverge, all permanent once earned. They show next to your name in the top ten of a board, or anywhere at all if you hold a Founding Pass.
- Undefinedsolve a difficulty 1
- Continuoussolve a difficulty 3
- Differentiablesolve a difficulty 5
- Convergentsolve a difficulty 7
- Asymptoticsolve a difficulty 9
Badges: sixteen of them, three you can never get later
They sit under your name on every leaderboard. None can be taken away once earned. Three of them close forever: the first 100 accounts, the 1,000 Founding Passes, and Pioneer, for the first 100 people to reach level 5.
Streaks and whoever is just above you
Play on a day and your streak goes up. Miss one and it goes back to zero, which is the entire mechanism. Days run midnight to midnight UTC, and the daily problem is the cheapest way to keep one alive.
You will also see the person immediately above you on XP, and exactly how far behind you are. Not the person at the top, the person you could pass tonight.
What costs money, and what does not
Free, permanently
- Unlimited practice in both modes, no account needed
- 1 ranked Sprint and 1 ranked Diverge every day
- The daily problem
- Every level, badge, streak and title
- Your name on every leaderboard
The Pass
- Ranked runs with no daily cap
- Your title shown at any rank, not just the top ten
- Full score history
That is the whole list. It buys volume, never power.
That is everything.
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