The daily challenge
The daily challenge is one secret Yila Mahjong board per day that every player gets to play. It is always classic tap-two, and the server replays every posted run before it can rank.
What is the daily challenge?
It is one secret board per UTC day. The server rolls the day's seed on its first request, everyone plays the identical board, and nobody can work out tomorrow's in advance.
The board's layout is picked by the date from a rotation of six named layouts. Whichever one comes up, the daily always plays classic tap-two: you tap two matching free tiles to clear them.
| Layout | Tiles | Shape |
|---|---|---|
| Garden | 32 | A calm single-layer 8 by 4 block |
| Blossom | 32 | A single-layer blossom silhouette |
| Heart | 46 | A single-layer heart |
| Pagoda | 104 | A 3-tier pyramid with half-tile offsets |
| The S | 22 | A single-layer letter S |
| Turtle | 144 | The classic turtle: an 87-tile base with tiers of 36, 16, 4 and a single crown tile |
Why is the daily always classic mode?
Because the leaderboard checks runs by replaying classic moves. The daily plays classic tap-two whatever your mode setting.
Tray mode games are just for you. They are not recorded and never feed the leaderboard, so switching modes in Settings never changes how the daily plays.
How do the ranks work?
There are two boards: Today and All-time. Today ranks the day's fastest clears, and All-time adds up each player's best daily scores.
- Today shows the top 10 runs, ranked by fastest clear, then fewest matches, then who posted first. It also shows your own rank as "#N of M".
- All-time shows the top 25 players by total points, adding each player's best verified daily score for every day they played.
- You get one entry per device per day, and it is your best.
After a daily clear you can post your time. You may type a display name of up to 20 characters. Left blank, it shows as "Anonymous". The daily win card then shows your rank, your top percentage, today's fastest runs and your streak.
How does the streak bonus work?
When you clear the daily, you earn a streak bonus of 5 coins times your current streak. A 3-day streak pays 15 coins, and a 7-day streak pays 35.
The bonus comes on top of the usual 20 coins for a cleared board and 10 coins per star. Clearing the same daily board again on the same day pays no coins.
One honest note: the daily streak counter starts again at 1 if you miss a day. Only the gift calendar is forgiving about missed days. Streaks also unlock two badges, Three in a Row and Weekly Devotion. See gifts, badges and the garden.
How does the server check a run?
It replays your moves. A submission is the raw move log, not a score, and the server plays it back with the same game engine.
Only runs that genuinely clear the board are ranked. The server works out the score itself, and a score sent by the player is never trusted. Some submissions are turned away outright:
- A copy of someone else's winning run under a new identity is rejected, because each move log can belong to one player only.
- A run faster than 200 milliseconds per match is rejected as not humanly possible.
- An oversized or malformed submission is rejected.
What does it not stop?
A scripted player that really solves the board can still post a fast time that looks plausible.
What is impossible today is ranking a run that did not clear the board. We do not call the leaderboard cheat-proof, and we would rather say exactly what is checked than promise more.
What happens if I am offline?
The daily still plays, on a board worked out on your device, but your run is unranked. The game tells you: "Offline, playing today's board unranked".
If the leaderboard cannot be reached, the Ranks screen says so and asks you to try again. The Android test build plays fully without a connection, and only the ranked daily needs the leaderboard server.
The leaderboard is still a prototype. The server runs on a development server over plain HTTP and stores entries in simple daily files. It is not production hosting.
Ready for today's board?
The daily is a tap away in the game, and it is the same board for everyone today.