How to play Daily Unfold
Daily Unfold is a puzzle about predicting where holes will land when a folded piece of paper is unfolded. The rules are simple, but the mental model takes a minute to click. This page walks through everything you need.
The basic idea
Imagine a square piece of paper. You fold it one or more times — say, left half over right, then top half over bottom. Now you punch a hole through the folded paper. When you unfold it, the single punch has become multiple holes, arranged symmetrically.
Daily Unfold shows you the folding sequence and the final punched position, then asks: where will the holes be when the paper is unfolded?
Reading the diagram
Each puzzle shows a numbered sequence at the top:
- Step 1, 2, 3… — each step shows one fold. The dashed line indicates the fold axis. The arrow shows which half is being folded over, and the shaded region shows which part of the paper is moving.
- Final step — shows the punched hole (a solid dot) on the folded paper.
- Below the sequence — an empty grid the full size of the original paper. This is where you mark your prediction.
Two important conventions:
- Folds always come toward you. The paper never folds behind itself. This keeps the simulation unambiguous.
- Punches go through every layer. When you punch a hole in folded paper, the punch goes through however many layers the paper is folded into at that spot.
The three daily difficulties
Easy (4×4, one fold)
A single fold produces a simple mirror. One punched hole becomes two holes in the original, symmetric across the fold line. This is the warm-up — most players finish in under 20 seconds.
Medium (6×6, two folds)
Two folds double the layers. One punched hole now becomes up to four holes when unfolded, reflected across both fold axes. You have to mentally unfold in the correct order — reversing the folds from last to first.
Hard (6×6, three folds)
Three folds can produce up to eight holes. This is where spatial intuition either carries you or it doesn’t. Most players find it helps to trace the fold in reverse, one step at a time, rather than trying to picture the whole thing at once.
Expert (timed + leaderboard)
Once you’ve completed easy, medium, and hard, Expert mode unlocks. It uses the hard difficulty with a running timer, and your solve time is submitted to a public daily leaderboard. You pick a nickname once; you can change it from the leaderboard view.
Scoring and stars
Each puzzle is scored on accuracy. You earn up to three stars based on how close your predicted holes match the actual unfolded result:
- ★★★ — every hole correct, no extras.
- ★★ — all correct holes found, but with a few extras, or nearly all correct with no extras.
- ★ — some correct holes, likely some misses or extras.
Your daily total is shown as a 9-star maximum (3 stars × 3 daily puzzles). Expert doesn’t count toward the star total — it’s a bonus mode.
Streaks
Completing at least one puzzle per day extends your streak. Miss a day and the streak resets. Your streak is tracked locally on your device — there’s no account — so clearing your browser data will reset it.
Tactics that help
- Unfold in reverse. Pick the punched location, then mentally undo the last fold (reflect across that fold line), then the second-to-last, then the first. Every fold roughly doubles the hole count.
- Watch the shaded half. The diagram always shades the half that’s moving. Your mental reflection needs to go in the opposite direction.
- Start with symmetry. If the punch is on a fold line, the reflected position is the same cell — so it only doubles when it’s clearly off the fold.
- Use the reference. After a wrong answer, the score screen shows a compact reference of the folds. You can review exactly how the paper folded before retrying tomorrow’s puzzle.
Daily archive
If you miss a day — or want more practice — you can play puzzles from previous days in the Archive. Archive puzzles don’t count toward your streak, but they’re otherwise identical to the original day’s puzzles.
Sharing your day
After finishing all three daily puzzles, you can copy a spoiler-free share text to the clipboard — a row of star emoji representing your result. Share it wherever you’d share a Wordle score.