How to play

The idea

Five shapes a day. For each one, you draw a single straight line that cuts it in two. The goal: two pieces with exactly the same area.

Draw the line in one motion: press, drag, release. The cut is the line through your starting point and your end point, extended edge to edge. You get one try per shape, and the cut is final when you let go.

Scoring

Both pieces are shown to the hundredth (A 49.97% and B 50.03%). How far off you are is the distance from 50: here, 0.03.

DEAD ON (off by up to 0.1): 100 points. CLEAN (up to 0.5), NOT BAD (up to 2), and WONKY (up to 5): 100 points minus 20 for every point you’re off. Anything more: MISS, 0 points.

The perfect cut

Whatever angle you pick, there’s always a parallel cut that splits the shape into two exactly equal halves. After each cut, it shows up as a dotted line, along with how far it was from yours, so you can see exactly how close you came.

The shapes

They’re real shapes: countries, islands, lakes, US states, plus one landmark and one object every day, photographed and cut out. Maps are drawn north up, in an equal-area projection, so the area shown when you cut is the area of the outline you see.

Every day

New shapes drop at midnight Eastern Time. Everyone cuts the same shapes, and you can see how you stack up against the day’s players.

Play

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