This glossary gathers the words of the game, the words of the site, and the figures the guides use without redefining them. Every definition stops where a demonstration begins: the guide that owns it is then named — and those guides are written in French, the one part of the site that isn’t translated.
The border around your player badge. The shop files it under “Profile frames” and the inventory under “Avatar frames”: it is the same item. The drawing set inside it belongs to another category, the avatar pattern, which is bought and worn on its own.
A distinction attached to your profile, unlocked by something you did in a game and never taken back. Nine exist, in four rarities, and none gives any advantage in play. What each one asks for is listed in “Progresser sans y penser : le barème de l’expérience en chiffres”.
The doubling of the score of whoever closed the round, if their total is not strictly the lowest. A plain tie is enough to trigger it; a score of zero or below is never doubled. The lead to insist on before closing is worked out in “La pénalité de clôture, et le calcul qu’elle impose”.
Shutting the round, which happens as soon as a player has no hidden space left. It is not a move you announce, but the automatic consequence of the move that reveals the last space.
An item that changes how things look, and nothing else. Eight categories can be worn: card back, table theme, avatar frame, avatar pattern, soundscape, card palette, flip effect and particle trail. The engine ignores every one of them.
The value above which covering a face-up card beats covering a space that is still hidden, once you are holding the card and only its destination is left to choose. The arithmetic belongs to “Ce que vaut vraiment une carte inconnue : le sabot en chiffres”.
Three goals drawn every day and paid in pearls; they never give any advantage in play. The draw is deterministic: the day’s key is the seed, so everyone gets the same ones. What they really yield is worked out in “Progresser sans y penser : le barème de l’expérience en chiffres”.
The game’s 150 cards: five -2s, ten -1s, fifteen 0s, then ten copies of every value from 1 to 12, adding up to 760 points. That make-up drives every probability at the table; “Ce que vaut vraiment une carte inconnue : le sabot en chiffres” draws them out one by one.
The pile where every card set aside lands, face up. It opens in full, from the most recent to the oldest: nothing in it is secret. Only the top card can be taken, and taking it obliges you to place it.
The stock of face-down cards you draw from blind. A drawn card leaves you a choice: place it, or turn it down — but turning it down obliges you to flip a space that is still hidden. “Piocher ou prendre la défausse : ce que chaque coup coûte” compares the three openings.
What you credit an opponent with while they still have cards hidden: a single value, drawn from what they show and from how many spaces they have not opened. It gives an average, never a prediction. The sum and its two corrections are set out in “La pénalité de clôture, et le calcul qu’elle impose”.
What a space you have not flipped yet is worth on average: 5.07 points. It is the game’s unit of account — the only way to put a price on what you cannot see. Where that number comes from, and how to recompute it mid-round, belongs to “Ce que vaut vraiment une carte inconnue : le sabot en chiffres”.
The points that move you up a level, earned in online games played through to the end. The scale rewards playing first and winning second; an abandoned game earns nothing. It is published line by line in “Progresser sans y penser : le barème de l’expérience en chiffres”.
The single turn every other player gets once the round has been closed; whoever closed it does not play again. It takes no account of how far behind anyone is: the player with five hidden spaces left still gets one turn.
Turning a hidden space face up without placing anything on it. It happens in three ways: on a free flip, after turning down a drawn card, and at the opening reveal. Placing a card reveals the space too, but that move is called a swap. A value once flipped is never hidden again.
Flipping one of your hidden spaces without taking anything: the turn ends there. The move costs and earns no points, but every space you reveal brings the closing nearer.
A run of rounds whose scores add up. It stops at the end of the round in which a player reaches or passes the target score; the lowest total wins, and a tie is shared.
Your twelve cards, in three rows and four columns, all face down at the start of the round. Three rows, so three cards to a column: that is how many identical copies a swallowed column asks for.
The player who opened the table. They set its options — seats, target score, turn deadline, spectators — and start the game. The theme everyone sees is theirs.
The public table of registered players, on three scales: worldwide, by country, by region. It sorts by wins or by level, never by total points, and five finished games open it to you. Not to be confused with the ranked rating, which measures something else entirely: see “Strength rating”.
Your progress, from 1 to 100, worked out from your total experience. Each step costs a little more than the one before; the whole curve is published in “Progresser sans y penser : le barème de l’expérience en chiffres”. No level gives any advantage; it says how long you have been playing, not how well.
The public list of open tables, with their name, their state, how many are seated and their target score. Private tables do not appear there: they are joined by their code, and by it alone.
The two cards everyone flips at the start of every round, and not of the first one alone. The highest sum revealed opens the round; on a tie, the highest single card decides.
How strong the computer player is: Beginner, Intermediate, Expert or Master — not to be confused with the Master tier of the strength rating, which has nothing to do with it. In solo play each one also carries a code name shown at the table: Bulle, Sonar, Abysse, Léviathan. The first three know nothing you could not know yourself; Léviathan sees the draw pile, and that happens in solo play only. What really separates them is set out in “Ce qui change vraiment entre les quatre adversaires”.
The game’s currency, earned from quests and spent on decorative items. A pearl is worth one cent, so 100 pearls to the euro: the price of an item is its price in cents.
One of your first five ranked games. The rating moves far faster there than afterwards, and no tier is announced before they have been played. The exact coefficient, and the two steps by which it decreases, appear in “Le classement expliqué par son barème : d’où viennent vos points”.
To take your turn, in the game’s own vocabulary. To probe is to choose between three openings: take the top card of the discard pile, draw blind, or flip a space without taking anything.
The wait that pairs players of similar rating. It asks for level 10: ranked play takes points off other people, and an account created for a single game would skew their rating.
When the draw pile runs out, the discard pile is shuffled to rebuild it, its top card staying where it is. Everything that had gone through becomes drawable again. It is the moment a count stops being true: “Lire la défausse : compter les cartes sans effort” sets out the trap.
One complete deal, from the opening reveals to the scoring. It opens with twelve cards each and one card to the discard pile, and ends on the final turn that follows the closing.
A game against computer opponents, played entirely in the browser, with no account and nothing to install. Nothing passes through the server, so it earns no experience, no pearls and no badge. Not to be confused with the “Solo game (halved)” line of the end-of-game summary, which means an online table where no opponent is human.
One of the twelve places in a grid. A space is hidden, face up, or emptied by a swallowed column — and an emptied space counts zero, for good. Placing a card on a space always turns it face up.
Someone following a table without playing at it. The host decides, when setting the table up, whether spectators are allowed. A spectator gets a neutral view: no hidden value is ever sent to them.
The measure of how well you play in ranked games, distinct both from a tally of wins and from the public table of the best players. Everyone starts at 1000 and never drops below 100. What a finishing place is worth, and why, is set out in “Le classement expliqué par son barème : d’où viennent vos points”.
As soon as the three cards of one column are face up and share the same value, the column is swallowed: they go to the discard pile and those spaces stop counting. What the bet pays, and when to give it up, are worked out in “Colonnes englouties : quand parier, quand renoncer”.
Placing the card you are holding on one of your spaces: the card it replaces goes to the discard pile and the space becomes face up. A card taken from the discard pile has to be swapped — it cannot be turned down.
An online game and the lobby that comes before it. It seats two to eight players, four by default, and the server alone applies the moves. The turn deadline is set when the table is opened, 45 seconds by default.
Six characters that identify a table and let you join it. The alphabet holds thirty-two of them: the letters without I or O, the digits from 2 to 9, so that a code read out loud is never taken down wrong.
The running total that ends the game, 100 by default. As soon as a player reaches or passes it, the current round is finished and the totals are compared.
Two players finish the round on the same total. For the win, a tie is shared; for the player who closed the round, it is not — that is the precise case the closing penalty punishes, and the reason it fires more often than anyone expects.
One of the six steps of the strength rating: Bronze, then Silver at 900, Gold at 1050, Platinum at 1200, Diamond at 1350 and Master at 1500. A tier changes nothing in the game and cannot be bought; what it takes to reach the next one is worked out in “Le classement expliqué par son barème : d’où viennent vos points”.
The stretch of time in which it is your turn to probe. Once the deadline has passed, the server plays for you — never by flipping one of your spaces: opening an absent player’s grid would be the worst move available.
Two cumulative goals drawn every week, on the same pattern as the daily ones and with multiplied targets. None of them asks you to sign in every day: a running total can be caught up on Sunday.