Number Baseball

Classic code-breaking with a baseball twist: find the pitcher's hidden digits from Strike, Ball and Out calls before your guesses run out.

Number Baseball

The pitcher hides a secret code made of different digits. Pitch your guesses, read the umpire's call and crack the code before your guesses run out. It is the classic pencil-and-paper code-breaking game, played under the lights.

How to play

1. Choose Normal or Hard and press Play ball.
2. Type a guess on the keypad (or the keyboard) and press Pitch.
3. The scoreboard lights up with the call for that guess, and the pitch is written into the log.
4. Use the calls to narrow the code down. Find it within the guess limit to hit a home run.

The calls

Call, Meaning

Strike (S), A digit of your guess is in the code, in the same place.

Ball (B), A digit of your guess is in the code, but in a different place.

Out, None of your digits is in the code, so you can cross all of them off.

Example: if the code is 3 8 1 and you pitch 1 8 5, the call is 1 Strike (the 8) and 1 Ball (the 1).

• A code never repeats a digit, and neither does a guess.
• Pitching a guess you have already pitched is refused and does not use a guess.
• The Memo panel is your notepad: tap a digit to mark it ○ (maybe) or ✕ (not in the code). The marks also appear on the keypad. They are only notes and never block a key.

Difficulty

Normal, Hard

Code, 3 different digits from 1–9, 4 different digits from 0–9, may start with 0

Possible codes, 504, 5,040

Guesses, 10, 9

Hard has ten times as many possible codes and one guess fewer. Every code can be cracked within the limit: a careful solver needs at most 7 guesses on Normal and 8 on Hard.

Records

Luck decides a lot in a guessing game, so Number Baseball has no leaderboard. The game reports whether you cracked the code, how many guesses you used and how long it took. Your best game for each difficulty (fewest guesses, then fastest time) and your number of wins are kept on this device. The result screen also shows a short code tag such as #A3F9 for the game you played.

Controls

Action, Mouse / touch, Keyboard

Type a digit, Tap the keypad, 0–9

Delete the last digit, ⌫, Backspace

Pitch the guess, Pitch, Enter

Mark a digit in the memo, Tap the digit in Memo, Shift + digit

Pause, ❙❙, Esc or P

The clock stops while the game is paused, and it also pauses by itself when the game loses focus. Sound and reduced motion can be switched in the top bar and are remembered.