About Statedoku
What it is
Statedoku is a free daily puzzle game where you fill a 3×3 grid with US states. Each row and each column has a constraint label (like "borders Mexico" or "named after a king"), and every cell must contain a state that satisfies both. Each state can be used at most once. You have 3 mistakes allowed. Solve the grid before you run out.
A new puzzle drops every day at midnight, the same one for everyone in the world. Solve it, share your emoji grid, come back tomorrow.
Why we built it
Wordle proved that simple daily puzzles can be addictive — you only need a small, smart constraint and a global shared experience. We wanted to apply the same formula to geography: a tiny ritual that teaches you something while you play.
Statedoku is the result. It rewards genuine US geography knowledge (where states are, what they border, what they're famous for) instead of vocabulary tricks. Anyone with a working memory of American geography can solve most days; the harder days dig into trivia like name etymology, statehood era, or election history.
How it's different
There are plenty of daily puzzles out there. Statedoku stands out because:
- Combinatorial, not random. Every grid is mathematically proven to have exactly one solution. No guessing your way through.
- ~100 different constraints rotate over time — regions, borders, mountains, belts, history, politics, name origin, sports, name patterns — so no two days feel the same.
- Mobile-first. Built for thumbs. Tap a cell, type 3+ letters, pick a state. Bottom-sheet input, big tap targets, safe-area aware.
- Multilingual. English, French, and Spanish — all constraint labels translated.
- Privacy-first. No accounts, no analytics tracking individual users, no server-side database. Your progress lives on your device.
What's under the hood
Statedoku is a static site hosted on Cloudflare Pages. The puzzle generator runs entirely in your browser — given today's date, it deterministically produces one and only one grid. That means:
- No backend to attack or maintain
- The site loads in under 100ms globally (Cloudflare CDN)
- Everyone playing on the same date sees the exact same puzzle
- You can play offline once the page is loaded (PWA)
Roadmap
What's coming, in rough order:
- Archive — replay any past puzzle
- Hard mode — more obscure constraints, fewer hints
- Daily themes — Mondays focus on geography, Tuesdays on history, etc.
- Optional premium — no ads, archive, themes, for the cost of a coffee
- More countries — Eurodoku (EU states), Asiadoku (Asian countries), etc.
Contact
Bug reports, ideas, partnership inquiries: [email protected].