The notebook
What changed and why, newest first
A site that says what it got wrong last week is a site somebody is looking after. This is the running record: what changed, why, and what we would do differently. Short, dated, no marketing.
An account, if you want one
You can sign in with Google now. Nothing changes for anyone who does not: the puzzle, the chains and the game work the same, and the browser keeps your streak as before. If you do, your ratings, your levels and badges, and your locker (your shirt, your hair, your racket) follow you to every device, and the puzzles you have met, right or missed, are yours to replay from your account page. We hold your name, picture and email from Google and the same saved state your browser has, nothing else, and one press deletes it all. The puzzle bank itself has come off the menus: the daily position is for everyone, the archive is for the people who played it.
We were wrong about the serve, and six other things
We checked every rules puzzle against the FIP rules that came into force on 1 January 2026, and the check found seven of ours stated something the rules do not. The biggest: the serve needs one foot behind the line now, not two, though neither may touch it; deuce has three systems in the rules (advantage, the new star point, golden point) and no default; a ball that hits a spare racket lying on the floor is live, not a let; a dropped racket loses the point at once. All seven are corrected, the glossary with them, and the corrected puzzles say so in their reasoning. If you answered one of them before today and were marked wrong, you may have been right.
Harder at the top, and a match to watch while you choose
From level four the other pair is quicker, sharper and slower to tire; at seven they get to everything and only miss what you make them miss. It is still winnable, following the coach we went point for point with them, but it takes the door drop and the lob they did not expect. Behind the menu two pairs now play a demo while you pick; nothing from it is recorded. And the stand has sides: your supporters in blue and yellow on the left, theirs in red on the right, and everyone leans in and goes quiet when a rally passes ten shots.
The block that was not there
For about a day, the defenders in Padel: The Game never blocked a door drop. We had moved a brace while adding the Finish event and the whole branch was sitting after a return, unreachable, and we did not notice because the drops still looked right. A code review caught it. It is back: a defender standing by the post blocks two in three, one caught across the court barely ever, and you can see the lunge and the "too late". If you played on Saturday and every door drop was a winner, that was why.
Lab notes
We started writing articles from our own numbers rather than from other people's articles. The first one counts the 303 positions in the bank and finds that attacking is the right answer sixteen times. We knew the game was patient. We did not know it was that patient.
Four moods, one fewer
The other pair now reads the scoreboard. Well behind, they turn optimistic or hopeless for two points; in a tight finish, anxious. We had a fourth, cocky, and took it out: a pair that is winning and starts missing on purpose did not feel like padel, it felt like a video game being kind to you. Your partner gets the moods too. You get them one time in sixteen, which is about how often it happens to us.
The fence is four metres
One of us watched a smash go out over the side glass without the height to do it, and said so, twice. He was right. We had the side walls at three metres all the way along; on a real court the first two metres from the back stand four, and the ball he was watching would have rattled the mesh and stayed in. One line of geometry, and the court now draws the corners taller so your eye has the same reference as the rules.
A crowd, by level
Level one has three friends on a bench. Level seven has a stand, banners and floodlights. They sway when nothing is happening and stand up when you finish a point, and we spent longer than we should have on the width of their shoulders so that they read as people from across the court.
Rest days
Seven straight days banks one. Miss a day, or get one wrong on a live streak, and the rest day is spent instead of the streak. We did this after reading the research on why people give up on streaks (a break you cannot mend is a reason to stop), and because we have all missed a Tuesday.
Where to watch, where to play
Two pages we wanted for ourselves: the Premier Padel calendar with who shows it in which country, and the clubs in ten cities with prices and the booking platform, checked by hand. If your club is missing, tell us; the list grows by request.
Rapid Fire, retired
We removed the timed quiz. It was fun for about a week and then it was a slot machine with a padel skin, and the chains do the same job with an actual point attached. The code is in the history if we ever miss it.
The chain is the game
Mock Games used to be scripted: a fixed sequence of the right calls. Now each one is a scenario played by the same engine as Padel: The Game, with a coach who replays every option thirty-two times before you choose. The answers come from what happens, not from what we wrote down, which means the coach has already disagreed with us twice.
The ref stopped listening
The scoreboard used to take the score by voice. On a court, between points, with four people talking, it heard everything except the score. It is tap-only now, and it asks golden point or advantage at every deuce, because every club has its own rule and nobody remembers which.
Older changes are in the site's own history, which is public. Something wrong today? Tell us; it goes in here when it is fixed.