Not content with being a writer, podcaster, comedian, science educator, and YouTuber, Hank Green released a gamified productivity app last year. Focus Friend encourages you to stop touching your phone, lest you disturb a little bean's knitting. It's adorable, by the way. Now he has jumped into the daily puzzle game with 4×3.
4×3 is essentially Connections, but with one word shared by all four categories. If you are already upping the difficulty of Connections by trying for the reverse rainbow or at least purple first, you will love 4×3. The overall difficulty level is lower than Connections. Once you get two categories, you can just brute force it. Where 4×3 shines, beyond just not being Connections, is in the scoring system.
Completing the puzzle earns 100 points, with bonuses for things like finishing in under 90 seconds, purple first, and a point for every day in your streak. On the other hand, mistakes cost 15 points, mistakes with only two categories lose you 30, and selecting the hub word last for all four categories costs you 100 points for some reason.
The game is also aesthetically pleasing. The squares have subtle colors — which are not hints! — and the hub word changes colors based on the colors of the completed categories. Even shuffling the words looks cool. Results can be shared as an image or text with emojis.
Green has been tweaking the game regularly, so some things may have changed by the time you are reading this. Also, be forewarned that he fully expects that he will, as all great polymaths do, move on to something else at some point and stop making puzzles. So either try not to get too attached or convince all your friends to play so he will be forced to keep doing it.
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