how to play crossbar
Crossbar is a free daily football grid. Each row and each column is a club, a country, a star's teammates or the Ballon d'Or. You have nine guesses to fill the nine squares with a player who fits both sides of that square.
- Tap a square, then type a player and pick them from the list. Small typos are fine.
- A right answer fills that square. A wrong one still uses up a guess, and that player is done for the round.
- The round ends when every square is filled or the ninth guess is spent.
- Each filled square says how well known your pick is among everyone who fits: obvious, solid or a deep cut.
- Players you tried that didn't fit stay listed under the grid, so you don't spend a guess on them twice.
- After that, tap an empty square to see up to three well-known answers.
Keyboard: Arrow keys move between squares when the box is empty, and between suggestions once you have typed. Enter guesses, Backspace deletes, and Esc goes back to the menu.
tips
- Big clubs that swap players are kinder than two clubs from opposite ends of the world.
- A country header means the player is from there, not that they played a match there.
- Played with means the two were at the same club in the same season: their years there overlap by at least one full year.
- The hint under a name is the country and the birth year, which is how you tell namesakes apart.
faq
Is there a new grid every day?
Yes. Everyone gets the same one that day, from the same seed. Freeplay deals a different grid: easy keeps to the busiest clubs and squares with plenty of famous answers, hard reaches for the next tier of clubs and more teammate squares.
Who counts?
Anyone in the pool of over 20,000 men's players who played for that club at some point, loans included, or who is from that country. Youth sides and national teams are not in the careers.
How is it scored?
By squares filled, out of 9. The share is the grid of filled and empty squares, with no names.
What does deep cut mean?
We rank everyone who fits a square by how well known they are. The few best-known names are obvious, the top half is solid, and anyone below that is a deep cut.
Where do the players come from?
Player facts and careers come from Wikidata (CC0), rebuilt with a script that checks famous careers before it ships. Country flags are from flag-icons (MIT). Crossbar is not affiliated with any league, club or player.