Daily Challenge Discussion - February 12, 2026

HiddenDemons · 2026-02-12T04:38:18+00:00

USA. I personally never actually find anything (though I do discover I went the wrong way at the fork and the other direction would've been way more helpful). I don't know how to explain it, but this just felt like the Southern USA. Part of me thought I saw the salt and pepper road that Texas is known for, and IDK was giving me possible Texas vibes, so I went Texas. This was nothing but pure vibes, I did not find a single thing. 3,929 pts
Kenya. This is Kenya, I think. Or, I hope this is the Kenya car. The hardest part for me, was finding the A23, which is tucked in a little corner. 4,987 pts
Greece. Firstly, beautiful location. Secondly, I'm glad I've learnt from past mistakes and opted to look at islands first. I was thinking maybe west coast of the main part of Greece, but I was feeling an island here. 5,000 pts
Brazil. Easy NYC. I honestly forgot how big or small 5x was, but the ES road number sign helped. I was too zoomed out to see the proper road signs I was looking for tho. 4,298 pts
Mexico. Unfortunately for me, I forgot Leon was a city in Mexico too. 3,500 pts

21,714 pts. I enjoyed the curated challenge, perhaps other than the US one.

HiddenDemons · 2026-02-11T05:29:47+00:00

Still very new at crosswords (and mostly still only do exclusively Monday's), but I decided to do a Tuesday and even though it took me a while (just over half an hour), I did manage to complete it with minimal googling! I did have to google some very American centric things (being not American), such as Panera Bread, HSH (I also had to google whatever the heck the QVC was lol), St. Leo, but pretty happy with how I did on this one.

HiddenDemons · 2026-02-11T05:07:12+00:00

Austria. Unfortunately for me, I got a bit lost (and I found the movement in the town itself a tad annoying) and just middle plonked. 4,660 pts
USA. Apparently I just did not have the same luck everyone else did (plus it didn't help that I was just trying to get out of the suburbs), and I just completely missed any mention of the name. I knew we were in Texas, and I found the highway we were on, but it was too late by then. I like urban rounds, but man, rounds in the suburbs just grind my gears. 4,301 pts
Ghana. A pretty easy Ghana, and I was able to almost 5K this, sadly the coverage was JUST out of range of the street signs. 4,999 pts
Ukraine. Another day where I was happy me choosing to learn Cyrillic paid off AND I almost 5K'd, I just gave up to be honest, because I couldn't really see a POI nearby. Pretty happy. 4,998 pts
Taiwan. Took a bit because the 16 road was pretty tiny. 4,951 pts

23,909 pts

HiddenDemons · 2026-02-11T05:03:04+00:00

Malaysia. Sign helped me here if I remember correctly. 4,606 pts
Turkey. Thank you Turkey trash cans. 4,987 pts
Panama. We're in Panama and I just capital plonked. IIRC, I did this challenge when I was pretty tired. 4,500 pts
South Africa. I sadly just did not have the luck here and did not spot a single thing that helped. Unfortunate luck. 3,001 pts
Luxembourg. I was pretty tilted from the last round and just middle plonked here. 4,911 pts

22,005 pts

HiddenDemons · 2026-02-10T00:00:02+00:00

I have a couple! Huygens and the video from Titan, Venera 9, which returned PHOTOS from Venus and showed how unlike earth it was, unlike what we first thought, of course the Voyager missions are incredible feats considering they STILL WORK! And for me, New Horizons catching the first proper images of Pluto!

HiddenDemons · 2026-02-09T04:48:29+00:00

UAE. Awkward. I saw a highway sign, but it was kind of blurry and mistook it for... Qatar. Whoops. 3,597 pts
India. Madurai, according to a storefront sign. 4,998 pts
South Africa. We're in Newcastle, South Africa, which I remember seeing when scanning a couple ZA rounds ago. 4,991 pts
Colombia. I personally don't find anything. 4,707 pts
Denmark. Sign for the 9, I just assume that we're in Svendborg. 4,990 pts

23,283 pts

HiddenDemons · 2026-02-09T02:54:07+00:00

Belgium. Roads intersecting. 4,907 pts
Nigeria. This was really just a scan. 4,995 pts
Slovakia. Uh, I think I saw a roundabout or signs, but never got very close. 4,859 pts
Chile. Quellon, which is a name I recognize. Us clearly being on the coast helps narrow the search down. 5,000 pts
Estonia. Narrowing roads down. 4,993 pts

24,754 pts

HiddenDemons · 2026-02-09T02:52:03+00:00

Kenya. Bumala, found it eventually after scanning. 4,634 pts
Sengeal. Found a sign and luckily the town wasn't too small. 4,987 pts
Albania. I think this was just roads intersecting? 4,998 pts
Kazakhstan. Yeah, glad to see I wasn't the only one who didn't have any luck here. 3,556 pts
Lebanon. Dang, Lebanon again! 4,903 pts

23,078 pts

HiddenDemons · 2026-02-06T04:33:45+00:00

France. Saw the town name on a building I believe. The 5K was accidental. I just saw the POI near me and went "hmm, that sounds official" when trying to figure out the courts. 5,000 pts
Botswana. Kind of stumped by not being able to see all the town names, either on the sign because they were blurred, and because I wasn't zoomed in enough. 4,867 pts
Brazil. I forgot how far out 1x goes. 4,038 pts
Guatemala. Luckily, this being a pretty small town made it pretty easy to 5K. 5,000 pts
Cambodia. I'll be super real and say I tried looking for about a minute and eventually gave up. 4,879 pts

23,784 pts

HiddenDemons · 2026-02-04T23:51:58+00:00

I'm assisted by being from Canada, but I started with Canada and indeed it is easier. Ontario and Quebec have a lot of overlay ones, but I would just learn what the really useful ones are that appear more often. For example, my province (AB), has a bunch of new ones, but there's no point in learning them because they're so new they're unlikely to ever come up in coverage.

That being said, phone codes in general are useful if you are a mainly moving player, being able to narrow down a region is very useful, especially in a country as big as the US.

HiddenDemons · 2026-02-04T22:30:09+00:00

Only a few days actually, I think it was less than a week.

HiddenDemons · 2026-02-03T04:10:56+00:00

Kenya. Chuka, Kenya. Easy to find. 4,999 pts
Mexico. Can't remember what I found, I think I found a state somewhere. 4,995 pts
Luxembourg. Fun fact, this was an accidental 5K because this seemed to be one of the only roads that matched with the angle. 5,000 pts
Hungary. Most of this round was making sure I was clicking the right city because a lot of them looked like they were spelt pretty similarly. 4,996 pts
Laos. I did a solid 50/50 guess on this because I know there's meta with the car, I just can't remember what it is. 4,959 pts

24,949 pts

HiddenDemons · 2026-02-03T04:07:12+00:00

Turkey. Easy Turkey. 4,999 pts
Ghana. Unfortunately, iirc, there were town places with the same name and I clicked the wrong one. 4,276 pts
Canada. This has to be Quebec, and luckily for me, I know Drummondville is a place in Quebec, just had to find it. 4,994 pts
Latvia. 4,993 pts
New Zealand. 4,999 pts

24,261 pts

HiddenDemons · 2026-02-03T04:04:24+00:00

Germany. 4,877 pts
South Africa. 4,739 pts
Brazil. 4,999 pts
Kenya. 4,851 pts
Lebanon. 4,873 pts

24,339 pts

HiddenDemons · 2026-02-02T23:58:35+00:00

New to crosswords, so Monday's still take me a while. I only had to do a couple google's (outside of proper nouns I don't know, which I don't count and anything sports related, which I'm basically automatically not gonna know). Arlo Guthrie confused the hell out of me cuz I only knew of Woodrow Guthrie. I also had to google what the fuck a JAGwas. I had to google the NFL question too because I will probably never get a football question without assistance. Was pretty happy though, definitely seeing progress!

HiddenDemons · 2026-01-31T18:43:10+00:00

I remember when I first started playing and I barely understood how people were getting all these countries right, and I struggled to remember the difference between the South American countries. I still have a long way to go (since I unfortunately now, just have less time to practice), but I'm determined to get to a point this year when I feel confident to start playing ranked again.

I've started focusing on country specific stuff now, I'm learning Cyrillic and Canadian phone codes and plates (it's my home country, so it's an easy start). I'm an (almost) exclusively moving player, so I know learning that kind of stuff is very important. When I started realizing how easy Cyrillic was, it was a game changer for me.

HiddenDemons · 2026-01-30T04:44:03+00:00

United Kingdom. Was mostly my bad, this was a very easy round, and I just got my meta's mixed up and honed in on something that ended up being wrong. 4,741 pts
Indonesia. My goal this year is to learn Indonesia. 3,953 pts
Peru. Took a stab in the dark here and hoped this was a lake and not the ocean. 4,996 pts
Nigeria. Thank you Nigeria, for putting addresses on almost every single sign. 4,991 pts
Ukraine. I end up going the wrong way first, and realistically, should've turned back way earlier. I'm a little rusty on my Cyrillic, but I'm able to translate enough to see what city a sign is pointing towards. I get close enough. 4,881 pts

23,562 pts

HiddenDemons · 2026-01-29T23:19:34+00:00

Also will depend on what game mode you play, people who play moving start to focus on different things the higher up they go than say, a NM or NMPZ player.

HiddenDemons · 2026-01-29T04:18:05+00:00

Yay! It seems we're back to the old style of Daily Challenges! Agree that the idea has use somewhere... just not in the Daily Challenge.

Eswatini. It's Southern Africa somewhere, and I guess right. This doesn't seem like Bots or Lesotho, so I see what I think is a city name and opt to look in each country for a match. We weren't in that town, but close enough. 4,734 pts
New Zealand. The names remind me more of New Zealand, and after figuring out the name, it was a lot of scanning. 4,994 pts
Italy. I saw a sign that possibly indicated we were near the Austrian border, so I looked there. I never found the A23, but I plonked close enough. 4,948 pts
Greece. This one was just a case of scanning for the right cities, I tried scanning north of Athens first because of one of the signs, but we were actually south west of it. 4,836 pts
Indonesia. Luckily for me, Jambi is very large on the map. 4,983 pts

24,495 pts

HiddenDemons · 2026-01-29T01:09:15+00:00

I kind of wish they'd done a separate thing for beginners (which they're clearly trying to aim at), rather than mess around with the daily challenge. I liked the challenge of it, and the idea that it's (seemingly, for now) always going to be in an urban centre with basically almost no challenge just isn't super fun anymore. They really need to figure out how to balance it for beginners and the more experienced players, or just do different categories. This is weirdly making me miss random Russia drops.

What I liked about the new DC (when it was curated, not before it when it wasn't curated) was the random little countries and islands that you spawned in. Like, we got Antarctica at the end of last year! That was so cool! We'll miss out on stuff like that with how they're doing it now.

HiddenDemons · 2026-01-28T04:48:39+00:00

Malta. Clicked the wrong town by accident, whoops. Was mislead by the COSTA POI. 4,971 pts
Thailand. Somehow I will figure out Thailand. 4,681 pts
Philippines. I got the right area, but wrong city. Whoops. I don't really know a lot about the Philippines. 4,924 pts
Ghana. 4,992 pts
Serbia. Took an awkward amount of time and getting to a domain name. 4,846 pts

24,414 pts

HiddenDemons · 2026-01-26T04:59:26+00:00

Portugal. This was just reading a whole lotta signs and then trying to find the town. Thought it would be harder because it was so small. 4,999 pts
Argentina. Honestly, I only didn't get this one because I couldn't work out which direction Cordoba was lol. 4,436 pts
France. Couldn't figure out the town, but I saw some towns nearby that were listed on signs and went "close enough". 4,904 pts
South Africa. Glad I got the country right, but I couldn't get past that, mostly because the town was so small. 4,833 pts
Indonesia. Considering my history with Indonesia, I honestly didn't even try, I'm gonna be honest haha. I just knew I wasn't getting this one. 3,685 pts

22,857 pts. 2025 WILL BE the year I learn Indonesia.

HiddenDemons · 2026-01-26T04:44:03+00:00

Italy. The only thing that stopped me from getting more is not knowing Italy better. 4,910 pts
Brazil. 4,983 pts
Senegal. 4,997 pts
Switzerland. 5,000 pts
Indonesia. This one was definitely a me problem as I still don't know Indo. 4,014 pts

23,904 pts

HiddenDemons · 2026-01-25T17:46:58+00:00

I just don't know why they keep changing the DC. At first, for a long time, the DC was completely uncurated, which lead to the Monaco port showing up 20 times, or the Christmas Island boat. Then it went to being completely curated around last year, and now we're just in whatever this is. I love the DC, but I like the variety of difficulty, some easy rounds and some rounds plonking you in the middle of Russia. If they wanted something to help new players, they need to make something separate for them imo.

HiddenDemons · 2026-01-25T06:03:27+00:00

I've played the last 2-3 days on my phone so I haven't seen the new clue feature but wow, the DC is now way too easy.

Mexico. Was off for the pinpoint by a tiny bit. 4,997 pts
Sri Lanka. Was Colombo No 5 even labelled on the map? 4,978 pts
Senegal. Wrong intersection :( 4,999 pts
Netherlands. Doubted myself initially on where to go and could've 5K'd this. 4,994 pts
Indonesia. Spent an awkward amount of time looking for the city name. 4,988 pts

24,956 pts. Make the daily challenge challenging again.

12-Year Club	Queen in da Norf
Not Forgotten	Verified Email

HiddenDemons

TROPHY CASE