How to play 20 Plenty
20 Plenty is a number puzzle about ascending chains. Each turn the game draws one card from the deck and shows you its number. You put it into any free slot of the board. Once it is placed it stays there, and the next number is drawn. After 20 turns the board is full and the game is over.
The board is one line of 20 slots. Wherever numbers next to each other stay the same or go up, they form a streak. The longer a streak, the more it is worth, so the whole game is about one question: where do you put this number so that the numbers you have not seen yet still fit around it?
Scoring
A streak of two slots scores 1 point, and every further slot adds one more point than the one before. That makes long chains worth far more than several short ones: two streaks of five give 20 points together, one streak of ten gives 45.
| Slots in the streak | Points |
|---|---|
| 2 | 1 |
| 3 | 3 |
| 4 | 6 |
| 5 | 10 |
| 6 | 15 |
| 8 | 28 |
| 10 | 45 |
| 15 | 105 |
| 20 | 190 |
Equal numbers continue a streak, so 14, 14, 15 is a streak of three. A lower number breaks it and starts a new streak. Empty slots also break a streak while the game is running, which is why the score can jump when you fill a gap.
The deck and the wildcard
The deck holds 40 cards and only 20 of them are played. It contains every number from 1 to 30 once and the numbers 11 to 19 a second time, so the middle of the range comes up more often than the ends. One card is the wildcard. It fits into any streak, which makes it the best card to repair a spot where two neighbors do not match.
A few strategy notes
- Think of the line as a ruler from 1 to 30. A 3 belongs near the start, a 27 near the end, and the many numbers from 11 to 19 need more room in the middle than the others.
- A number that is already on the board cannot come again unless it is between 11 and 19. Counting the cards you have seen tells you which gaps can still be filled.
- Late in the game, one long streak with a single break is usually worth more than keeping every option open.
Daily challenge and practice
Practice deals a fresh random deck every time and keeps your best score, your average and your longest streak. The daily challenge gives every player the same cards in the same order, once a day, and counts for your streak on the daily puzzles page. Both are free and run in the browser: no signup, nothing to install.
This page is the classic mode of the game. If you want to play against other people, the 20 Plenty app for Android has multiplayer and leaderboards.
Related guide
Frequently asked questions
How is the score counted?
Slots next to each other whose numbers stay the same or go up form a streak. A streak of n slots scores n times n minus 1, divided by 2: two slots give 1 point, three give 3, five give 10 and ten give 45. Your score is the sum of all streaks. A single slot between two breaks scores nothing. The best possible board is one streak over all 20 slots, which is 190 points.
Do streaks continue from one row to the next?
Yes. The board is one line of 20 slots that is only folded into rows to fit the screen. Slot 10 and slot 11 are neighbors on a wide screen, and so are slot 5 and slot 6 on a phone. The small number in the corner of each slot shows its place in the line.
Which numbers are in the deck?
The deck has 40 cards: the numbers 1 to 30 once, the numbers 11 to 19 a second time, and one wildcard. Twenty of the 40 cards are drawn in a game, so you never know which half you get. Numbers from 11 to 19 can come twice, every other number at most once, and the wildcard shows up in about every second game.
What does the wildcard do?
The wildcard is the card with the star. It fits into any streak: placed between two numbers it never breaks the streak on its left, and the number after it only has to be at least as high as the last number before it. If the numbers on both sides do not fit together, the wildcard counts for the side where it brings more points.
How does the daily challenge work?
The daily challenge deals the same 20 cards in the same order to every player on the same calendar day, and a new one starts at midnight in your time zone. You have one attempt. If you reload the page, the game continues where you stopped. The result goes into your streak on the daily puzzles page, and you can share it as a line of text without giving away the cards.
Is this the same game as the 20 Plenty app?
It is the classic mode of the app with the same deck and the same scoring, made to play in a browser. The Android app adds what a web page without accounts cannot do: multiplayer against friends or random opponents and leaderboards for the daily challenge. The daily cards on this page are our own and are not the ones of the app.
Is anything saved or sent?
Your best score, your average, the game in progress and the result of the daily challenge are stored in this browser only. Nothing is sent to a server, so there is no account and no leaderboard here. Clearing the site data of your browser removes them.