EXCUSE
none
Every choice shows what it will cost before you touch it.
Four cards an hour. Deal with any three; the fourth carries into the next hour, and three new ones join it. Every card you deal with moves the clock. The deck is the day: 44 cards, nine to five.
Colleagues ♣ and deadlines ♠ cost patience: the big number on the card (J is 11, Q 12, K 13, A 14). Bare-handed, you pay all of it.
An excuse ♦ stays beside the desk once you take it. Use it on a colleague or deadline and you pay only the difference — a 6 excuse on a 9 costs 3, on a 5 nothing. It wears out: after it handles a 9 it only covers cards below 9, then below whatever it handled last. Taking a new excuse throws the old one away; the new one covers anything.
Coffee ♥ gives its number back, up to 20. Only the first coffee in an hour counts; a second one that hour is drunk for nothing.
Two breaks a day. Before you deal with any card in an hour, put all four at the bottom of the deck and get four new ones. You'll see those cards again. Not in the hour right after a break.
Clock out at five — every card dealt with — with any patience left, and that's your score. If your very last card is a coffee and you're on a full 20, its number is added on top. Reach zero and you've lost the day.
Par is the best this deck allows. Solved in advance; match it and it's a perfect day. On the few days marked ? it's the best the solver could prove, and you might beat it. Your best on each day comes back as a ghost on the bar.
To play, tap or click a choice next to a card. Each shows what it will do — −9 → 11 — and there's no undo; a greyed-out one says why not. Tapping the card itself only reads its choices out, in the box by Take a break.
If you keep losing: take an excuse whenever you have none, or yours only covers small cards now. Use it on the biggest card you can see and work down, and don't waste it on small ones — once it has handled a 4 it will never cover a 10 again. Don't drink coffee at 20, or two in one hour; leave it as the card you carry instead. Take a break when the hour is all big cards and you have nothing to meet them with.
| 1 – 4 | pick a card | B | deal with it bare |
| E | use the excuse | C | coffee, or take the excuse |
| Space | its first open choice | R | take a break |
| N | new day | T | today's day |
| M | rematch | ? | this help |
| Esc | put it down / close |
No sound. No timer — the clock is the deck. It saves after every card, so close the tab whenever.
Any day from 1 to —.
It counts as a loss and costs rating. A bad hour is usually one coffee from a good one.