How to play Quorum
One board a day, the same board for everyone.
The rule
Tap a column to drop a counter. Counters showing the same number form a group when they touch — up, down, left or right, never diagonally. A group clears when it holds exactly as many counters as the number they show.
A group of three 3 counters clears. A group of four does not. Nothing in the game ever makes a group smaller, so that fourth counter does not merely fail to score — it kills all four permanently. They fade to 3 and sit there for the rest of the run.
That is the whole game: not making groups, but making them exactly the right size.
Stones
Every seventh counter after the twentieth is a 0. It follows from the same rule rather than adding one: a group clears when its size is exactly its number, and no group has size zero, so a stone can never clear. Nothing removes it. You get to choose the column; after that it is terrain.
Stones exist because without them the game has no ending you can lose to. Clearing a group removes exactly as many counters as it took to build, so a player who keeps the surface flat and never overshoots accumulates nothing at all — and simulating exactly that strategy finished every board with room to spare. Stones are the only thing on the board you cannot answer, which is what makes the rest of it a fight.
Wall them off. A stone in a column you have written off costs you one cell; a stone in the middle of your working area costs you the shape of everything you build afterwards.
Every board deals 200 counters — the same 200, in the same order, for everyone. Spending all of them is the thing to beat, and it is meant to be rare: on measured play only strong runs get there, and roughly three boards in four end with the tray full and counters unspent. The question is not how long you last. It is what you got out of the 200.
Where the points are
Clearing a group drops everything above it. If that landing forms another valid group it clears too, and scores double. A third link scores triple. Chains are worth far more than the counters in them, so setting one up is almost always better than taking a clear immediately.
What the numbers say
We simulated eighty boards played by four different strategies, from random tapping up to a player who plans one move ahead using the visible queue. The gap is large:
- Random tapping: the board wins long before the counters run out.
- Always taking any available clear: a few hundred points.
- Also keeping the stack low and avoiding oversized groups: roughly triple that.
- Planning one move ahead with the queue: several times more again.
On the same board the player who plans ahead wins almost every time, and across every run 82% of the difference in scores came down to who was playing against 6% for which board they were dealt. You are not waiting for a good board. You are getting better.
Four things that help
- Watch the queue. The next counters are shown for a reason. The single biggest jump in the numbers above came from planning one move ahead, nothing deeper.
- Count before you drop. Landing a 2 beside a lone 2 clears both. A third ruins all three, permanently.
- Keep the stack low. Height is not scored, but it is what ends the run, and a tall board leaves no room to fix a mistake.
- Decide where the stones go before one arrives. They come on a fixed count and the queue shows them, so a stone is only a surprise if you were not looking. Pick a column to sacrifice and keep feeding it.
- Respect the 5 counters. Five touching is the hardest thing in the game to arrange and the easiest to overshoot, which makes them the most common source of dead weight. They are deliberately rare, and they get commoner as your counters run down.
Common questions
Does everyone get the same board? Yes. It changes at midnight UTC, and the sequence of counters is identical for every player, which is what makes the ranking mean anything.
Do diagonals count? No. Counters connect up, down, left and right only.
What happens when the counters run out? The run ends and your score stands, and getting there at all is an achievement. Usually the tray fills first — that is the board beating you, and it is the normal outcome rather than a failure.
Can I play again? Your first finished run is the one that ranks. Later attempts never replace it, so nobody can climb the board by replaying it.