Welcome to Puckdoku
Welcome to Puckdoku
Welcome to Puckdoku, a game that puts your hockey knowledge skills to the test! The game gives you 9 clues or “shots” at guessing the players that correspond with the NHL two teams they played on during their career. The game has categories on the top and left hand side. The object of the game is to match the categories, and find a player that fits within both of them. If you incorrectly guess a player, you lose a “shot”, with the goal being to go 9/9.
Once you correctly select a player, you will notice a percentage in the top right hand corner; the lower the percentage, the more rare your guess was among all active users. When trying to find a player that played for the two NHL teams you are guessing, there are numerous rules that apply when making your decision. As long as the player has played one NHL regular season game for the club, they are able to be counted in with the guesses. One thing to keep in mind though as you take your “shots” that players who played for teams that relocated and then moved back to their original city do not count for this game, however the stats they accumulated do count.
Puckdoku offers very relatable features to Wordle, with a new Puckdoku being offered to customers once the clock strikes midnight PST. It also includes a summary once you are completed with your “shots” that shows the popular picks as well as the average score of the day while also showing how many users were perfect. Once you are completed, you’ll also be able to see a list of all the players that were selected for each category with a percentage of how many users picked each player.
For today’s Puckdoku (March 18), we are given three teams on the left hand side of the board and we are tasked with matching them with the teams that appear on the top of the board. Once we select a player, the player's face will appear in the respective box along with a percentage that indicates the rarity of your answer.
First up is the Carolina Hurricanes and we are asked to find players who played at least one game for the Carolina Hurricanes and the Detroit Red Wings, Washington Capitals and Florida Panthers. For this I went with Brendan Shanahan (Red Wings; 8%), Alexander Semin (Capitals; 11%) and Eric Staal (Panthers; 32%). The Shanahan and Semin answer percentage is what I am typically looking for when solving Puckdoku, and since I got stumped on the Panthers choice I just went with the more obvious answer. Instead of doing Eric Staal, I could have gone with Stanley Cup champion Kris Versteeg or even current NHL analyst and former goaltender, Kevin Weekes.
Next up is the San Jose Sharks and this one I again struggled to figure out someone with a lower rarity score for the Florida Panthers. To begin, I answered Brad Stuart (Red Wings; 8%), Eric Fehr (Capitals; 2%) and Anthony Duclair (Panthers; 26%). I am awful when it comes to Florida Panthers history and some options I could have ventured to was James Reimer (3%) or even Dan Boyle (1.9%). For my other answers I wasn’t mad about the rarity scores I got because when completing the Puckdoku board, I want answers that are 10% or below to make sure my rarity score overall is low.
Lastly, we have the third board which is usually a fun stat board that can consist of career games played with an organization, playoff games with an organization, accumulating a certain amount of penalty minutes within a season with an organization, the list goes on. For today, we are tasked with finding a player who played 50+ career games in the NHL. I love these categories because you have a wide range of options which can help lower your rarity score. For the Red Wings, I went with the third-year forward Lucas Raymond, who has already amassed 224 career regular season games. With Raymond being a young player in the league, the rarity of this answer was just 2%. For the Washington Capitals, I dug into my bag of hockey knowledge and went with Sonny Milano who is in second season with the Capitals and has already found his way into the lineup 99 times. The casual fan might not know about Sonny Milano, which allowed for this answer to fall into the 1% category. Last on the board was the Florida Panthers, and for this one I really had to dig deep into my bag of hockey knowledge as I selected goaltender Chris Driedger. With such a short stint in Florida that only lasted 35 games across two seasons, I was able to achieve a rarity score of 0.1% with just six other people coming up with that answer.
In the end, I was able to finish with a total rarity score of 90, which isn’t the best but there is always room for improvement. I love playing Puckdoku because it is such a fun way to be competitive with your friends and it is something you can do daily. So be sure to be logging into Puckdoku every morning because there will always be a fresh board available for when you wake up. Test your hockey knowledge and discover some players you might not have known played for your favorite team.
