How to Play | Kaptr

🧩The Daily Puzzle

Once a day, every player gets the same cryptic Riddle, a clue that describes an object without naming it. Find that object somewhere around you, then photograph it. That photo is your guess: our AI judges on the spot whether it actually matches, and scores how good a match it is.

You get a limited number of photo attempts each day: 3 on the free tier, 5 with Kaptr Plus. A wrong photo costs points but lets you try again. Running out of attempts without a correct one ends the day as a loss.

💡Hints

Stuck? You can reveal up to 3 Hints, each one narrowing things down further. The third Hint gives you the answer outright. Every hint you reveal costs points off your final score, so use them only when you need them.

None of this is required: you can snap a photo the moment the Riddle opens, with zero hints, if you're confident.

🎯How your score is set

Your score starts at 100 the moment you open the Riddle, and the clock never pauses, not while reading, not while framing the shot:

Every second that passes costs 1 point.
Our AI grades how well your photo matches the Riddle, adding back up to 10 points for a great shot.
Every hint you reveal costs 20 points.
Every wrong photo attempt before your winning one costs 10 points.

A perfect, instant, first-try photo scores a clean 100. Everything else is that score minus whatever time, hints, or wrong attempts cost you.

🃏Tiers

Every score is a pull. A scored photo lands in one of four tiers: Bronze (0–49), Silver (50–74), Gold (75–89), and Prismatic (90–100). Tiers are cosmetic, they never change the rules or the math, but 90+ is a different kind of day.

BRONZE 42 0–49

SILVER 68 50–74

GOLD 87 75–89

PRISMATIC 94 90–100

🧭Quest Passports

A collect-them-all mode at your own pace, with four collections: The Naturalist (plants, animals, and bugs), The Epicurean (dishes and food), Urban Explorer (street fixtures), and Globetrotter (buildings and structures). Snap your subject, and our AI identifies what's in the photo and checks it against the collection's catalog. Every first catch earns a stamp in your passport. More themes are on the way.

Some catalog slots are Mystery until the first player anywhere catches one. That player gets permanent First Discoverer credit, and the slot is revealed for everyone else from then on.

🔥Streaks

Play on consecutive days and the run grows. Miss a day, or run out of photo attempts without solving it, and the run is over: your streak resets to zero. The day still counts as played, but the streak doesn't survive it. Your longest-ever run is tracked separately and never resets.

👥Friends & Leaderboards

Add friends with a shareable code or by scanning a QR code. Once connected, you'll see each other's daily scores and get notified when a friend plays. Two leaderboards are always available:

Friends: ranks you against the people you've added, by today's score, streak, or total score.
Global: ranks every player. Showing your real name and photo here is opt-in; by default you appear under a nickname.

🏃Hunt

A Squad mode (Challenges → Squad) for when everyone's around right now. Invite friends and they get about 2 minutes to jump in. Then everyone who accepted starts the same session at the same moment: 10 rounds, 10 minutes, and the maximum score on offer melts a little every minute the clock runs. Same rounds, same clock, one leaderboard.

🔁Relay

A Squad mode for when you're not together. Play your 10-round session first, then hand the exact same contest to one friend with a deadline, anywhere from 1 hour to 3 days. Their clock only starts when they open it, and the rounds stay hidden until they do, so there's no scouting ahead.

🎲Bingo

Two Bingo modes live in the Squad grid. Bingo Sync: everyone gets the identical 5×5 card of photo prompts, and the first player to complete a line wins. Bingo Live: every player gets a different card drawn from a shared pool, and cells unlock over time on the caller's clock.

👥TeamComing soon

One more Squad mode is in the works. Its tile already sits in the app's Squad grid, marked coming soon.

🏆Private Contests

The classic way to compete: create a contest and invite specific friends, or join one with a shareable code. Everything you're playing lives under Challenges → Yours, each game with its own leaderboard.

🎉Public ContestsComing soon

Themed community events anyone can browse and join with a tap, no code needed. Filter by theme, jump in while it's running, and compete on a dedicated leaderboard. We're rolling this out gradually, so stay tuned in the app's Challenges tab.

✨Kaptr Plus

A subscription that raises your limits rather than changing the rules: 5 photo attempts a day on the Daily Puzzle instead of 3, plus a larger monthly allowance for creating Private Contests.