NintenDoku in numbers

This page looks at how the daily puzzle is actually played. Not which games are popular, that is what the ranking is for, but how hard the cells are, how many people complete a full grid, and how often everyone arrives at the same answer.

Period covered: 2026-03-20 to 2026-07-25

127
days analysed
3,215
puzzles played
71.7 %
of attempted cells were solved
6.4
cells per grid on average
38.4 %
complete all nine cells
821
different games appeared as an answer

How many cells get solved

Share of completed puzzles by number of solved cells. Nine means a fully filled grid.

0 cells9.2 %
1 cell2.8 %
2 cells3.1 %
3 cells4.5 %
4 cells4.5 %
5 cells5.6 %
6 cells8.6 %
7 cells8.9 %
8 cells14.5 %
9 cells38.4 %

How much the community agrees

Within any single cell, an average of 37.3 percent of all correct answers go to one and the same title. Put differently: roughly every third to fourth solve lands on the same game, even though a dozen or more titles would usually fit.

On average 11.4 different games show up as the answer to a single cell. The gap between those two numbers is what the scoring system is built on. Playing the obvious title gets you through. Finding one of the rarer correct titles scores more.

The most obvious answers

These titles account for the largest share of solves whenever they are a valid option. They are the safe pick, and they score accordingly little.

  • 1The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening49.5 %
  • 2The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom42.5 %
  • 3The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild39.7 %
  • 4Tetris 9939.7 %
  • 5Super Mario Land38.5 %
  • 6Pokémon Red / Blue36.4 %
  • 7Super Mario Odyssey35.7 %
  • 8Donkey Kong Country34.8 %

The most versatile games

These titles were a valid answer in the widest range of different cells. That measures how many categories apply to a game at once, not how popular it is.

  • 1The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild53 cells
  • 2The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom38 cells
  • 3Fire Emblem: Three Houses36 cells
  • 4Super Mario Bros.36 cells
  • 5Super Mario Bros. Wonder31 cells
  • 6Mario Kart World28 cells
  • 7Fire Emblem Engage27 cells
  • 8Donkey Kong Bananza26 cells

How the numbers are produced

Everything here is based on completed runs of the daily 3x3 puzzle. Each finished puzzle records which cells were solved and with which game. Nothing else feeds into the figures on this page.

Hardcore mode is deliberately excluded. It has sixteen cells instead of nine and noticeably tighter categories, and mixing the two would make any solve rate meaningless. Unlimited mode is excluded as well, because everyone gets a different grid there and the numbers would not be comparable.

Absolute counts per game are deliberately not published, only shares and orderings. Otherwise the numbers would reveal which titles reliably work in which categories, and that would spoil the puzzle for everyone else.

Related: Most popular Nintendo games · Play NintenDoku · About N-Puzzle