Every drop counts
3-minute read
Fill the Space has no timer that runs out and no lives to lose. What it counts is drops. Knowing exactly how drops turn into marks and points changes how you play, mostly by making you slower and calmer.
Placements and extra drops
Each piece’s first drop into the room is free. A room with five pieces can be finished in five drops, and that’s a Perfect room. Every drop after that is an extra drop:
- moving a piece that’s already in the room to a new spot,
- taking a piece back to the tray and dropping it in again.
One thing is free: if you pick a piece up and put it straight back where it was, nothing is counted. That makes it safe to lift a piece to look underneath it.
The drops meter under the room’s title shows your spare drops. A room allows ten extra drops. Use them all, or reach the point where you can’t finish within what’s left, and the room ends: Out of moves.
Marks
Each room earns a mark, the coloured square you see on Results and in your shared score:
- 🟩 Perfect: no extra drops.
- 🟨 Good: one to three extra drops.
- 🟧 Fair: four or more, and still solved.
- ⬛ for a room you gave up on or ran out of moves in.
Points
The four rooms grow harder through the day, and they’re worth more as they go: 150, 250, 250 and 350 points. A perfect day scores 1000. Each extra drop takes 10% off that room’s points, and a solved room always keeps at least 10%. A room you give up on, or run out of moves in, scores nothing.
Here’s what that means for the last room of the day, worth 350:
| Extra drops | Mark | Points |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | 🟩 Perfect | 350 |
| 1 | 🟨 Good | 315 |
| 3 | 🟨 Good | 245 |
| 5 | 🟧 Fair | 175 |
| 9 | 🟧 Fair | 35 |
| Out of moves | ⬛ | 0 |
An extra drop in the last room costs 35 points. In the warm-up it costs 15. The rooms where mistakes are most likely are also the ones where mistakes cost the most, so that’s where your patience pays.
Time
A clock runs while you play, and Results shows your time. Time never changes your score. It only matters on a perfect day: when two players both score 1000, the faster one ranks higher. So until you’re regularly scoring 1000, the clock is just for interest. Speed is worth nothing if it costs a drop.
Playing for points
- Think first, drop second. Looking is free. Use the habit: find the tightest cell, test the options in your head, then drop.
- Lift to look, then put it back. Returning a piece to the exact spot it came from costs nothing.
- Don’t panic after a mistake. One extra drop still leaves a Good. Rushing to fix it is how one extra becomes four.
- Finish if you can. A solved room always keeps some points, even after nine extra drops. Giving up scores nothing, so give up only when you’re truly stuck and want to see the solution.
- Save your care for the late rooms. The last room is worth more than twice the first, and it’s usually the hardest.
Every past day is in the archive, with a hint and the solution for each room. Rooms you missed make good practice, and since nothing is counted there, you can drop as often as you like in your head.
Next guide: A short history of polyomino puzzles