Pinpoint Rules
The actual constraints of a Pinpoint round: how many clues, how guesses work, what counts as fair play, and the edge cases people ask about.
Core rules
One puzzle per day. Five clues maximum. One answer that must fit every clue you used.
Clues unlock progressively. You may guess early with partial information, or wait until the full set is open. Nothing forces an early submit.
You can revise a guess while clues remain hidden. Changing your mind is free; stubbornly sticking to a dying candidate is what usually costs extra reveals.
When the round ends, the result screen shows how you did and offers a spoiler-free share. The answer itself stays out of the share block on purpose.
What counts as solving
You solve when you submit the answer the game is holding, not merely a word that feels related. A strong synonym can still miss if the stored answer is the plain headword.
Using fewer clues does not change whether you solved; it changes how the result looks. Solved with five clues is still solved. Solved with one is the bragging-rights version.
Running out of attempts without the word ends the round unsolved for that day. The archive, LinkedIn history, and sites like this one still have the puzzle afterward for study.
Fair play and spoilers
Looking up hints or answers is a personal choice. Some people finish first, then read explanations. Some open hints mid-round when a streak is on the line. Neither is a moral failure; they are different ways of using the same day.
When you share results on LinkedIn or in chat, keep the word out of the message. The share graphic is built for that. Posting the answer in the caption is the one thing that actually ruins other people's rounds.
Do not spam the same answer across comment threads 'to help'. Spoiler culture around daily games is simple: assume everyone is still playing until they post their own result.
Edge cases people hit
Synonyms: sometimes accepted, sometimes not. When rejected, the stored answer is usually the shorter or more literal option. Try that before you invent a fancier variant.
Plurals and articles: if your guess fails, try without the article and try the singular. Game answers on this site are typically bare headwords.
Multi-word answers: occasional. If every clue seems to want two words that always travel together, stop forcing a single noun and test the pair.
Hyphenation and spacing: prefer the common dictionary form. If the game once accepted a spaced version and you are reading an older explanation, the answer page here will still show the headword we have on record.
Rules this site follows
We do not auto-submit answers into LinkedIn for you, and we do not run bots against the game. Pages here are for reading and study.
We label difficulty, category, and pattern ourselves. Those tags are editorial navigation, not official game data, and we say so on the About and Disclaimer pages.
We keep search results out of the sitemap so the site does not generate endless thin URLs. The stable index is answers, archive, and the learning pages.