How to Play Pinpoint
A full walkthrough of LinkedIn Pinpoint: what you see when the page loads, how clues unlock, when to guess, and how to read your result.
What Pinpoint is
Pinpoint is LinkedIn's daily word puzzle. One hidden answer, five clues that all point at it, and a new round every day. It lives in the same games area as Queens and CrossClimb, and like those, you only get one shot at today's version.
The design goal of the game is small: give you a couple of minutes of thinking between scroll sessions. The design trick is better than the goal. Clues arrive progressive, so a confident solver can stop early and a stuck solver can keep pulling the string until the word is obvious.
There is no multiplayer, no timer, and no penalty beyond needing more clues than you wanted. Your result can be shared as a spoiler-free block, which is why group chats fill up every afternoon with squares and not words.
What you see on screen
You get the puzzle number, the date, and clue one. A control reveals the next clue when you ask for it. As clues open, guess fields and hint language (depending on the day's UI) let you commit or keep thinking.
The answer does not appear until you solve it or until the game shows it to you after you run out of moves. That is the whole loop: read, hypothesize, reveal, revise, submit, then look at the result screen and either feel smart or feel curious.
On this site, the matching day page mirrors that structure without the wait: five clues visible, three progressive hints you control, and a reveal button that stays closed until you press it. People often finish the real game first, then open our explanation to see which clue was the trap.
A step order that works
Read clue one and write two hypotheses, not one. First guesses in Pinpoint are often the obvious reading, and obvious readings are frequently the bait.
If neither hypothesis survives a mental test, reveal clue two. Repeat. Keep both candidates alive until one clearly dies against a new line. Killing a candidate too early is how people end up needing all five clues out of stubbornness, not difficulty.
When you feel sure, submit. When you do not feel sure, either reveal another clue (costing a bit of score pride) or sit with it. There is no clock. Walking away mid-round and coming back with fresh eyes solves more puzzles than aggressive guessing.
After the round, read why each clue fit. Thirty seconds of that after each day beats an hour of reading strategy once a month.
How your result is judged
Fewer clues used reads as a sharper solve. The share graphic that goes to LinkedIn shows a compact result, not the answer, so people can post progress without ruining it for the group chat.
Streaks track consecutive days solved. Missing a day resets the streak, which is why the archive and answer sites exist: not only to look up a miss, but to learn the pattern so the next day does not miss.
Do not confuse one perfect round with skill. A lucky first guess on an easy day feels great and teaches little. The boring metric that improves people is: how often can you name the pattern before you name the answer?
Getting better without spoiling yourself
Pick a personal rule. Common ones: never open an answer site before solving; open hints but not the answer; always finish the real game, then read the explanation. Any rule works if you keep it, because the point is deliberate practice instead of reflex lookup.
When you do look up an answer, read the pattern tag and one clue explanation, not just the word. The word alone does not transfer. The relationship does.
If you want structured practice, our Learn section builds from patterns up, and each answer page links related puzzles with the same shape. Two same-pattern rounds in a day will teach you more than scrolling strategy tweets.