Sports Fans Are Flocking to Immaculate Grids for the Perfect Daily Game

Have the competitive fire for Wordle but lack in the vocabulary department? Immaculate Grids are here, and they are becoming the obsession of fans and players across every sport.

Like the Wordle craze that struck the internet in 2021, Immaculate Grid and similar games have quickly become popular with sports trivia enthusiasts looking to test their knowledge on a daily basis in a straightforward yet challenging interface.

According to Google Trends, searches for these games over the last week made up half of the top 10 terms related to the NFL, a space usually reserved for league news and trade rumors.

In the game, users are presented with a box split into nine sections with characteristics of players to identify lining the top and left side of the grid. The goal is to name a player that satisfies the row's and column's criteria.

Just one wrong answer ends your attempt at an Immaculate Grid for the day. You have nine spots to fill out and nine total attempts, so in order to be "immaculate," you have to get all of them without a miss.

Puzzle players who make a correct guess that a low percentage of other players used in their attempt will result in a lower, better, rarity score. So, for example, if the criteria for the box is Cardinals and Players who hit 40 home runs, you're going to get a lot of "Mark McGwire" and "Albert Pujols," but fewer people going with "Jim Edmonds" and even fewer would answer "Johnny Mize."

While the Immaculate Grid is a baseball-oriented game, several other versions have sprung up as well, including for football, basketball and hockey.

Social media users who want to flex their knowledge have taken a similar approach to those strutting their Wordle prowess. Users will share the array of green and/or grey square emojis or self-censored screenshots of their completed mosaic of players to avoid ruining the fun for those who've yet to play that day.

Not only are fans enjoying putting their sports knowledge to the test, athletes are getting in on the fun, too. New York Yankees manager Aaron Boone said he and his team fill out Immaculate Grids.

"It's big in our clubhouse right now," Boone said during his weekly conversation on Jomboy Media's Talkin' Yanks podcast.

"It's pretty amazing," Chicago Cubs broadcaster Jon "Boog" Sciambi said while calling Thursday's matinee game against the Milwaukee Brewers. "It's just dorky baseball stuff."

The Brewers were seen completing an analog version of the game during their series with the New York Mets in late June, writing the answers on a print-out of the day's grid.

Brewers outfielder Jesse Winker, who was set down on strikes as Sciambi explained Immaculate Grid on Thursday's broadcast, was reportedly perfect on paper at Citi Field in New York.

The baseball version was launched on April 4 and has made some adjustments to the categories offered as well as including more statistics, such as the popularity of an answer and showing the most popular picks at the end of the round.

For an even further degree of difficulty, some players like to put a time limit on themselves, though there is no timer in the game.

"You've got to rip it off in 10 minutes," Boone said. "I want to do it as quick as possible."

Uncommon Knowledge

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

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