A complete guide to the rules, the modes, and how to win in fewer moves.
Quadle is a daily number-tile puzzle played on a small four-by-four grid (hence the name!). Every tile on the board shows a number and belongs to one of two sides. Your job is to place tiles from your hand so that, one flip at a time, every tile on the board turns to your color. It takes about thirty seconds to learn and considerably longer to master, because the shortest solution is rarely the obvious one.
You win a puzzle when every tile on the grid is green. Green is your color. Any tile that isn't green yet is still contested, and the puzzle isn't finished until the last one flips over. There's no score to chase during a puzzle and no clock in the standard game — the only question is whether you can turn the whole board green before you run out of good moves.
Each puzzle gives you a board that's already partly filled with numbered tiles, plus a hand of tiles waiting below it. The board tiles are the ones you need to convert. The hand tiles are your tools: you place them onto empty squares to trigger flips. A key thing to understand early is that you don't have to use every tile in your hand, and you don't have to fill the board. A clean solution often leaves squares empty and tiles unused. More placements is not better — fewer is.
On your turn you pick a tile from your hand and drop it onto any empty square on the board. The moment it lands, it challenges its four orthogonal neighbors; up, down, left, and right. Placed tiles always starts out as yours (green), and it can flip both enemy tiles and, importantly, tiles that are already green.
A flip happens when the number on your placed tile beats the number on the neighbor it's challenging. When it wins that comparison, the neighbor flips to green and joins your side. When it doesn't, nothing happens to that neighbor. Your tile simply sits there without converting it. Because a single placement checks all four neighbors at once, one well-chosen tile in the right square can flip several tiles in a single move. That chain of simultaneous flips is the heart of every good Quadle solution: you're not looking for a tile that beats one neighbor, you're looking for the square where a tile beats as many as possible.
The catch that makes the puzzle interesting is that your own placed tiles are fair game too. A strong tile dropped next to a green tile you worked to capture can flip it back out of your control if the numbers line up the wrong way. Planning around your own pieces — not just the enemy's — is what separates a two-move win from a messy scramble.
Every puzzle gives you three undos. If a placement doesn't do what you hoped, you can take it back and try a different square or a different tile. Undos are generous on purpose — they let you experiment — but they're also counted. If you're playing for a top efficiency rating, each undo you spend counts against you, so the best solvers treat their three undos as a safety net rather than a search tool.
The Daily Puzzle is the same for everyone, everywhere, and it changes once a day. It's the mode most people play — one puzzle, one honest attempt, and a shareable result you can compare with friends. Because everyone gets the identical board, the Daily is where streaks and bragging rights live. Miss a day and the streak resets, so it rewards showing up.
Endless is exactly what it sounds like: an unlimited supply of freshly generated puzzles to play back to back. There's no daily limit and no waiting. It's the mode for warming up, for practicing a particular kind of position, or for when one puzzle simply isn't enough. Every Endless puzzle is solvable, and like the Daily, each one gives you three undos.
Blitz turns the calm puzzle into a pressure test. Your first puzzle gives you ninety seconds. Solve it and the next puzzle arrives with five seconds less on the clock — then five less again, and again, tightening with every win. The run continues as long as you keep solving in time; the moment the clock hits zero or you misplay past recovery, the streak is over and your best run is recorded. Everything else works like Endless: three undos per puzzle, a fresh board each time.
When you win, Quadle shows how efficiently you solved it. It compares the number of tiles you actually placed against the fewest a perfect solver would have needed, and factors in how many undos you spent. Solve a puzzle in the minimum number of tiles with no undos and you'll earn the top rating; every extra tile or undo costs you. It's entirely optional (a win is a win!) but some wins are winnier than others.
That's the whole game. Start with today's Daily Puzzle, and when you want to drill, switch to Endless or test your nerve in Blitz.