Daily Brains · crack a tablet in an invented ancient script, gentle on Monday, fiendish on Sunday.
Hieroglyphics is the code-breaking puzzle in Daily Brains (/daily). Each day everyone gets the same tablet: a proverb, a line from a long-dead writer, an old riddle or a fun fact, written in an invented script of 44 carved signs. Every sign hides a letter, and the key is reshuffled every day. Tap a sign, type the letter you think it is, and every copy of that sign fills in at once. The week climbs from a short Monday saying with free letters to a Sunday inscription with no spaces where the commonest letters each wear two different disguises.
STORY & LORE
An invented script
The 44 signs (eyes, waves, reeds, suns, ladders, crowns and stranger things) were drawn for this game. They are not copied from any real writing system, and none of them carries a real sign's meaning. Each day's seeded shuffle deals them out again, so the wavy sign that meant E yesterday might mean K today.
The book of inscriptions
There are 412 inscriptions: proverbs from around the world, public-domain lines from writers such as Shakespeare, Austen, Franklin, Pope and Lao Tzu, classic riddles and checked fun facts. The book is split into seven length bands, one per weekday, and each weekday works through its own band in a seeded order, so no inscription comes round twice for more than a year (59 weeks). The answers are sealed in the page source, so they cannot be read before the tablet is cracked.
HOW IT PLAYS
Cracking a tablet
Tap any sign (or use ← → / Tab) and type a letter on the on-screen or physical keyboard. On Monday to Saturday each letter belongs to only one sign, so typing a letter that is already used moves it to the new sign, and used letters are dimmed on the keyboard. When every sign is right, the tablet lights up gold and the translation appears with its source.
The weekly ramp
Monday · Gentle: a short saying with word spaces, punctuation and up to three signs given free (shown in blue). Tuesday · Steady: two free signs. Wednesday · Tricky: one. Thursday · Tough: one free sign, no punctuation. Friday · Hard: nothing given. Saturday · Brutal: no word spaces at all, and two or three ringed signs each stand for a whole word (THE, AND, OF…), which you type out in full. Sunday · Fiendish: 73+ letters, no spaces, nothing given, and the commonest letters (up to six of E T A O I N S R H L) are each written with two different signs, which flattens the frequency counts.
Help, and what it costs
ƒ Freq opens a free panel that counts every sign, most-used first, next to the usual English order ETAOINSHRDLU (tap a sign there to jump to it). 💡 Reveal cracks the selected sign (or the next unsolved one) for good. ✓ Check wipes every wrong letter you have carved. Reveal and Check each count as a hint. Give up (tap twice) ends the day and shows the translation.
Scoring
A crack is worth 500 points plus up to 500 for speed: the full bonus for finishing within half of the day's par, fading to nothing at three times par. Each hint costs 120, with a floor of 100 for any crack. Pars are Mon 2:00, Tue 3:00, Wed 4:00, Thu 5:00, Fri 7:00, Sat 10:00 and Sun 15:00. The timer only runs while the page is visible. A crack with no hints is a perfect day.
Sharing
The share card shows one square per sign, in the order the signs first appear: 🟨 cracked by you, ⬜ given free, 🟦 revealed by a hint, 🟥 still sealed. It also shows the weekday tier, your time, hints and points. It never gives away the text.
GALLERY
THE WEEK
| Day | Tier | Spaces | Free signs | Twist | Par |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | Gentle | Yes | Up to 3 | Shortest sayings | 2:00 |
| Tuesday | Steady | Yes | 2 | 3:00 | |
| Wednesday | Tricky | Yes | 1 | 4:00 | |
| Thursday | Tough | Yes | 1 | No punctuation | 5:00 |
| Friday | Hard | Yes | 0 | No punctuation | 7:00 |
| Saturday | Brutal | No | 0 | Ringed whole-word signs | 10:00 |
| Sunday | Fiendish | No | 0 | Two signs for common letters, 73+ letters | 15:00 |
REWARDS
| Event | Reward |
|---|---|
| Crack the day's tablet | 15 Tickets |
| Crack it with no hints (perfect) | +25 Tickets |
| First Translation (first crack) | 🏺 Bronze · 10 Tickets |
| Rosetta Mind (no-hint crack) | 🪨 Silver · 20 Tickets |
| Field Season (3-day streak) | ⛏️ Bronze · 15 Tickets |
| Scribe of the Week (7-day streak) | 📜 Gold · 40 Tickets |
| Keeper of the Lost Script (30-day streak) | 👁️ Legendary · 100 Tickets |
VERSION HISTORY
- Launch version with Daily Brains.
- 44 invented glyphs, a 412-inscription sealed book, a seven-step weekday difficulty ramp (Gentle to Fiendish).
- Saturday whole-word signs and Sunday homophonic ciphers; frequency panel, Reveal and Check hints, give-up path.
- Time-and-hints scoring (max 1000), streaks, statistics, and a spoiler-free share card.