Guide

How to play Catamount

Catamount is a daily guessing game about numbers. You get seven questions, each with a single numeric answer. The closer you get, the higher Pico, the 8-bit mountain lion cub, climbs.

The basics

Every climb is seven questions long. Each question asks for one number: a price, a year, a distance, a height, a count, a speed, a length of time, or a size. A daily climb draws from seven of those eight categories, so you never get seven questions of the same kind.

Every answer is worth up to 100 points, and every point is worth 20 feet of altitude. Seven perfect answers add up to 700 points and 14,000 feet, which is the summit. Your score is shown as altitude, and your altitude earns a rank, from Trailhead at the bottom to Summit at the top. The scoring page explains exactly how a guess becomes a score.

Entering a guess

You can answer in two ways: drag the slider, or type the number on the keypad. For most questions the slider is logarithmic, which means each step along it multiplies the number instead of adding to it. That lets one slider cover everything from a handful of dollars to billions. Years use an ordinary linear slider that runs from 1400 to 2030.

Typing is faster once you know your answer. Commas and dollar signs are optional, and you can use shortcuts for big numbers: k for thousand, M for million, B for billion and T for trillion. So 2.5M means 2,500,000. The 000, k, M and B buttons under the keypad do the same job on a phone. Decimals work for everything except years.

The clock

You have 20 seconds per question. If time runs out while you have a guess entered, that guess is locked in as it stands. If you never entered anything, the question scores zero. Fast answers earn a small speed bonus, worth at most 8 percent of that question's score, so accuracy always matters far more than speed.

The hint

Once per climb you can use a hint. It shows a range the answer falls inside, and it costs 20 points on that question (only if you would otherwise have scored). Because you only get one, the best use is a question where you have no idea at all, not one where you are already close.

Daily climbs, practice and past climbs

• Daily climb. Everyone gets the same seven questions on the same calendar day, and a new climb opens at midnight in your own time zone. Finish it to extend your day streak.
• Practice climb. Seven random questions, as many times as you like. Practice does not count toward your streak or your stats.
• Past climbs. The last six days stay available on the home screen if you missed one. They are marked as late and still count toward your stats.

After the climb

When you finish, you see your altitude, rank, a log of all seven answers, and a curve showing how a typical player would have done on the same questions. You can copy a result to share, text it to a friend or email it. The shared result is a short emoji summary, not your answers, so it does not spoil the climb for anyone else.

Where your progress lives

Catamount has no accounts. Your streak, scores and past climbs are saved in your own browser, on your own device. That means they do not follow you to another phone or browser, and clearing your site data erases them. Read the privacy policy for the full picture.

New to estimating?

Our guide to estimating big numbers teaches the habits that separate good guessers from lucky ones, and the guides on years, prices and distances and heights cover the other common question types.