This week and This month: how the Board ranks a period

Where to find them

Open Board from the main navigation. Along the top are five tabs: Today, Yesterday, This week, This month and All-time. Choose This week or This month.

Each of those two tabs has a pair of buttons above the table. The first shows the current period and the second shows the one before it, so This week sits beside Last week and This month beside Last month. A label above the table gives the exact dates covered and says In progress for the current period or Completed for the previous one.

When a week and a month start

Both views use London calendar dates, the same boundary as the daily reset. A week runs Monday to Sunday. A month runs from the 1st to its last day.

The current period always ends today. So on a Monday, This week holds one day, and on the 1st, This month holds one day. Last week is always the whole of the previous Monday to Sunday, and Last month the whole previous calendar month, however far into the new one you are.

Today's points are still provisional, because other players can finish after you and move your places. The note under the table says so: the current week or month stays provisional until its final London midnight reset.

What each column counts

The table has five columns.

• Player: your display name and animal, with You under your own row.
• Points: the sum of every league point you earned on the dates in the period. This is the figure the table is sorted by.
• Days entered: how many of those dates you finished at least one competitive daily on its own London day.
• Games: how many competitive dailies you finished that way in the period. A board you gave up on or ran out of guesses on is not counted.
• Rank: your place on total points. A player with no points in the period shows a dot instead of a rank.

Only same-day league results reach it

The weekly and monthly totals add up exactly the points already on each day's Board. Nothing is recalculated. That means the same rule applies as everywhere else in the league: a competitive daily counts only when you submit it on the London date printed on the board.

So a Saturday spent clearing Monday to Friday in the Library's Catch-up section adds nothing to This week. Neither do Just for fun boards, Practice boards or For You. They save your result, but they carry no league points.

An invented week, read two ways

Four made-up players, one Monday to Sunday week, ten competitive games a day. Asha plays every game on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and does well: 82.5, 79 and 88. Ben plays five games every day of the week and scores between 33.5 and 38 each time. Cara plays seven to nine games on each weekday. Dev only plays the weekend, all ten games both days, for 61 and 59.

What the table shows for that week

Ben wins the week on 250 points, half a point clear, because he turned up all seven days. Asha and Cara both finish on 249.5. Exact ties share a rank, so both show 2 and Dev, on 120, is 4th rather than 3rd. Within a tie the rows are listed alphabetically, which is why Asha appears above Cara; the order inside a tie means nothing.

Now take the same week and measure it the way All-time does: points divided by every competitive game available on the days each player entered. Ben entered seven days of ten games, so 250 over 70 is 3.57. Asha's 249.5 over 30 is 8.32. Cara's is 4.99 and Dev's 6.00. The weekly winner would come last.

We ran these figures through the same code the Board uses to build both tables.

Why the two tables disagree

They measure different things on purpose. This week and This month reward volume: every day you enter and every extra game you finish adds to your total, and a missed day adds nothing. All-time is built so that someone who joins late, or misses a fortnight, is not buried by absences, which is why it divides by the games available on the days you actually entered.

The practical difference for a period table is that an unplayed game costs you only the points it might have paid. It never drags a total down. If you have ten minutes, playing two quick games adds to your week whatever place you finish, since even a low finish pays at least 0.5.

A common mistake

Reading This week as a form guide. A high weekly rank says you banked a lot of points, which may simply mean you played often. To see who plays each board best, look at the per-game places on the Today and Yesterday tabs, or at All-time.

The other misreading is to treat this week on the Board as Rival Week. Rival Week, in Challenges, is a head-to-head against one opponent over eight agreed games. This week on the Board is everyone in the league, across every competitive game, with no opponent to pick.

Limits worth knowing

The period views cover the whole competitive slate together. The single-game Board, which you reach by tapping a game's icon at the top of the Today or Yesterday table, has only Today and All-time, with no week or month.

On a phone the table is wider than the screen. Swipe it sideways to reach Games and Rank; the Player column stays pinned on the left.