How to play Long Shot Hoops

A round is seven prompts. Each one asks you to name an NBA player, team, college, or arena that fits a rule. You have 25 seconds after a short “get set” countdown. A name that does not fit is simply not on the board, and you can keep guessing until the clock ends.

Score tiers

Every accepted name has a fixed point value for that day. Obvious answers are the cheap shots. Rarer answers are worth more. The labels on the public game page are:

Tier	Points	How to read it
Layup	10	The name most people hit first
Too Cute	15	A little less obvious, still common
Rotation	30	A real rotation player, not a headline
Deep Bench	60	A name you have to reach for
Two-Way	85	Rare enough that most rounds miss it
Buzzer Beater	100	One or two names per prompt

Buzzer Beater values are set before the day opens. They are not a race against other players. Points do not change if you answer faster. The clock only limits how many guesses you can try.

Close view of a pixel scoreboard with cyan range and orange score — The guide’s scoreboard crop. The live game uses the same cyan range and orange score idea.

What a prompt accepts

Player prompts use Basketball-Reference season and career lines. The game page credits those stats.
A teammate prompt means the same franchise in the same season.
A decade prompt uses the season’s ending year. “2000s” covers seasons ending 2000 through 2009.
College prompts accept any school listed on the player’s page, including transfers. Current rookies count.
A wrong franchise, a misspelled name, or a player who never fit the rule does not score.

Day boundary and streak

One official board per day. It changes at midnight Eastern. Past boards stay playable from the game’s own past-games list. A streak is stored in the browser you play in. An in-app browser on a phone keeps a separate streak from Safari or Chrome, which is why the game page tells app users to open the site in the phone browser.

Pixel-art night basketball court used as the guide’s arena backdrop

Easy to mix up

Krillion’s Longshot also uses seven prompts and 25 seconds, but its tiers are named Surface through Abyssal and its reset is 04:00 UTC. Those rules are on the comparison. There is no official unlimited mode; that question has its own page.

Questions people ask

How many questions are in Long Shot?

Seven prompts per daily board. Each prompt accepts many names. You are not picking from a multiple-choice list.

Does a faster answer score more?

No. The point value is attached to the name, not to your speed. The 25-second clock only caps how long you can keep typing.

Can I play yesterday’s Long Shot?

Yes. The game page has a past-games list back to Game #1 on 27 Oct 2026. This guide’s archive explains those boards and links you back there.

Do I need an account?

No. The public page does not ask you to sign in. The optional chip-in is two dollars and is not required to play.

Sources

The Gravity Report — Long Shot — checked 2026-11-03
All the Dles — Long Shot — checked 2026-11-03