Browser games and pointless experiments. Nothing to install.

The Password Game

Eighteen rules. A running clock. Good luck.

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What is the Password Game?

You are asked to make a password. Simple enough, until the rules start arriving. Include a number. Now include a special character. Now the digits must add up to 25. Now it must contain a month of the year. Every time you satisfy a rule, another one appears, and the earlier rules never go away.

The joke lands because everyone has met the real version of this. Password requirements that demand a capital, a symbol, and no symbol from a list they will not show you, are a genuinely universal irritation. The game just keeps going until the requirements become absurd, and the frustration curve is the entertainment.

How to play

  1. Type a password.
  2. Satisfy the rule that appears.
  3. A new rule arrives, and the old ones still apply.
  4. Keep going until you cannot, which happens to everyone eventually.

What the rules actually ask for

Eighteen rules, revealed one at a time, and every earlier rule still applies. They escalate from ordinary requirements like a number and an uppercase letter into arithmetic constraints (the digits must total 25, the Roman numerals must multiply to 50), external knowledge (a chemical element symbol, a leap year, today's actual day of the week), and finally a rule about the password's own shape: the total length must be a prime number.

That last one is deliberately cruel, because every other fix you make changes the length and can knock it off a prime. It is solvable, and there is a timer running while you work it out.

Tips for getting further

  • Build long from the start. Later rules demand you contain a lot of specific things, and a short password has nowhere to put them.
  • Fix the arithmetic rules last. The digit sum and the prime length are both easiest to satisfy by adding or removing single characters once everything else is in place. Do them in that order, since changing digits changes the length.
  • Keep your special characters in one block. When a later rule bans or requires something, a tidy password is far easier to edit than a scattered one.
  • Read the rule before you type. Half the failures come from satisfying a rule while accidentally breaking an earlier one.
  • Do not get attached. Sometimes the correct move is to delete most of it and rebuild around the newest constraint.

The serious point buried in the joke

Complex composition rules make passwords worse, not better. Forcing capitals, digits and symbols pushes people toward predictable patterns, capitalising the first letter, appending a 1 and an exclamation mark, and substituting a zero for an O. Attackers know all of these, so the resulting passwords are shorter and more guessable than a plain string of random words.

Modern guidance has moved on. The US National Institute of Standards and Technology now recommends length over composition rules, dropping mandatory periodic expiry, and checking passwords against lists of known breached ones instead. Longer is genuinely better than more complicated, which is precisely the opposite of what this game demands of you, and why it is funny.

Other frustrating games here

If you enjoy being deliberately antagonised by an interface, I'm Not a Robot does the same thing to CAPTCHA verification, and Absurd Trolley Problems does it to moral philosophy. All of them are free, run in your browser and need no sign-up.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Password Game?

You build a password against eighteen rules that are revealed one at a time. Every earlier rule still applies, and a timer runs from your first keystroke, so it is a race as well as a puzzle.

How many rules are there?

Eighteen. They escalate from ordinary requirements like a number and an uppercase letter into arithmetic (the digits must total 25, the Roman numerals must multiply to 50), outside knowledge such as a chemical element symbol and today's day of the week, and finally a rule about the password's own length.

Is it actually possible to finish?

Yes. Every rule can be satisfied simultaneously, and the game records your completion time. It is deliberately fiddly rather than impossible.

Any tips?

Build long from the start, since later rules need room. Leave the digit sum and the prime length until last, and do them in that order, because changing the digits also changes the length.

Is my time saved?

Your best completion time is stored in your own browser. There is no account and nothing is sent to a server.

Do complicated password rules actually make passwords safer?

No, and that is the joke underneath the game. Forcing capitals, digits and symbols pushes people toward predictable patterns. The US National Institute of Standards and Technology now recommends length over composition rules and checking against known breached passwords instead.

Does it work on a phone?

Yes, though a physical keyboard makes the later rules considerably less painful, particularly the ones that need specific characters.