The rules of Rankle
It all fits in one sentence — put each country on the criterion where it ranks best — but the scoring deserves a closer look, to know what you are really optimising.
How a game unfolds
- Eight criteria are drawn from the game's 41 and shown from the start: population, area, GDP, forest cover, UNESCO sites, highest point…
- Eight countries appear one at a time, out of the 195 UN member states.
- For the country shown, you pick a criterion that is still free. The country goes there and the slot closes: each criterion is used only once.
- By the eighth country, one slot is left. The game ends and the grid is revealed, with every country's real rank in every slot.
There is no clock in a solo game: Rankle is a thinking game, not a reflex game.
The world rank
Each slot is worth the country's rank on that criterion, among the game's 195 countries. Russia is 1st by area, France 1st by tourist arrivals, Monaco 1st by wealth per inhabitant. A rank of 1 is perfect; a rank of 150 is a wasted slot.
When a country has no data for a criterion — a microstate with no FIFA ranking, a country with no forest-cover measurement — the slot counts 200, worse than the last of the 195. Putting a country on a criterion where it is not measured is the worst possible mistake, and the final grid flags it.
Total and efficiency
Your total is the sum of the eight ranks. Lower is better: eight first places would total 8.
That total is not shown on its own, because it depends on the draw: a grid of large countries on large criteria gives everyone a low total. So the game computes the optimal placement — among the 40,320 ways of spreading eight countries over eight criteria, the one with the lowest total — and compares you to it:
Efficiency = optimal total ÷ your total × 100.
Example: if the best possible placement totals 190 and yours totals 380, your efficiency is 50 %. At 100 %, your total equals the optimum — not necessarily with the same placement, since several arrangements can tie.
What the score rewards
- Seeing the whole board rather than reacting. A country's best criterion taken on its own is not always the one to give it, if another country in the grid needs it more. The strategy page shows this on a real grid.
- Knowing the extremes: knowing who is first, second and third on a criterion is worth more than knowing the exact value.
- Caution with microstates, often first on one criterion and without data on many others.
Scoring in duels, ranked and leagues
When Rankle is a round of an online game, efficiency is mapped onto the scale shared by every mode, 0 to 1000 points: 1 % efficiency = 10 points. A grid at 87 % is worth 870 points, comparable to a round of flags or 3D globe. That is what lets Rankle chain with other modes in one game, and keeps a single leaderboard.
Streak, the variant
Streak asks the same question — on which criterion does this country rank best? — but one country at a time, against four criteria, and a single mistake ends the run. No grid to fill, no efficiency: the length of the run is the score.