TL;DR
- Halfsies has no accounts and no friend requests. A private board, called a posse, is a code that friends agree on.
- The code is 4 to 8 letters or numbers. Everyone who enters it shares one board that adds up the last 7 days.
- Anyone who has the code can join, so the code is the only lock. HNKL42 is harder to guess than PIZZA.
- The code is stored on the device, so a phone and a browser each need it typed in once.
Halfsies is my daily cutting game. You get three hand-drawn objects a day and one cut each, a scale weighs the two sides, and you get a score out of 300. Today its guides page put up an explainer on the leaderboards. Three of the four boards rank everyone who played. The fourth is a private board for friends, and the game has no accounts to hang it on.
A code stands in for the friend list
A private leaderboard usually needs a sign-up, a friend list and an invite. Halfsies has none of those. A posse is a code. Open the leaderboard, tap the POSSE tab, type 4 to 8 letters or numbers and tap RIDE. Send the same code to your friends, and everyone who enters it lands on the same board.
The code is forgiving to type. Capitals do not matter, and spaces and symbols are dropped. That makes it easy to pass along in a family thread or a work chat, where somebody will add a space or type it in lowercase.
What the board counts
The Posse board adds up each member's daily scores over the last 7 days, counting today, and shows the top ten. It is the same sum as the worldwide This Week board on a smaller table. Joining late is fine. If you already played today and then enter the code, today's score is pulled into the posse.
A weekly sum rewards showing up. The guide works it out: 250 a day for seven days is 1,750, and 290 on five days with two skipped is 1,450. In a group of friends, the steady player wins the week.
What the code gives up
With no accounts, the code is the only lock. Anyone who has it can join, and there is no password and no approval step. The guide says so plainly and suggests a code like HNKL42 over one like PIZZA.
The code is also stored on the device and not on a profile. If you play on a phone and also in a browser, you enter it in both places. You can be in one posse at a time. Entering a new code swaps your board, and your worldwide scores are not affected.
Names work the same way. You can type one in, and if you leave it blank the game gives you a stable one made of the word Slinger and five digits.
One rule keeps the daily board fair
About one run in ten ends with a bonus round worth up to 60 extra points. The Today board is ordered by the cut score alone, the number out of 300. A bonus shows as a second number on the row, so a 290 with no bonus sits above a 276 with a 38 point bonus. Replays of past days from the Archive are practice and are never sent to a board.
The other guide that went up today is about a real scale. A US nickel weighs 5 grams, so twenty of them should read 100 on a kitchen scale.
The Halfsies ad diary #13 has the rest of the day, including the ad account, which spent nothing again. Diary #11 covers the bonus rounds that the Today board keeps out of the ranking.
The leaderboards guide is on The Ledger, and the game is at halfsies.jejestudios.com.