The Masters of the games

One tile in the menu is not played: it shows who won. You pick a game there, and you see the ten best.

First place is not number one

It is grand master, and only one person holds it. The others follow, from two to ten, like an ordinary queue.

This is not a typographical flourish. A “1” reads as the start of a queue, and invites you to compare the gaps; the title says instead that there is a place to be taken, and only one. That is the difference between a board you consult and a board you want.

Some games keep a board

Tape-Brique, Tac-o-Tac, Zipper, Onyx and Mordicus. The others are played for the game itself and have nothing to rank: a backgammon does not produce a score that compares from one game to the next.

The best score also appears inside the game, and while you play: on the panel for some, on a thin line at the bottom of the screen for others. A ranking that lives only on another screen does not exist — nobody goes there after losing, and seeing it at the end of a game comes too late to aim for.

Looking costs nothing

The board can be consulted without an account, and that is the whole point: someone who has no account has to see what there is to beat, otherwise they do not know what they are playing for.

Appearing on it takes an account and a chosen name. The service keeps only a number and goes to fetch the name when it displays the board; it never takes the device's word for it, or anyone could pass themselves off as the grand master.

It follows you

The ranking belongs to the account, not to the machine. Beating the record on the phone and seeing it again on the living-room computer is the same board.

See also: playing together, and the privacy policy.