A five-to-seven minute round on the number a short-term loan offer never prints: what it costs a year once every charge is counted and the money actually handed over is the principal. Each slip gives you the amount, the term, the quote in the unit it is quoted in, and how each fee is collected — added to the repayment, taken with the first instalment, charged every period, or deducted at drawdown. You put a slider on a logarithmic ruler from 8% to 800%; within four steps is a hit. Then the slip opens: in hand, total paid, cost, days held, the annual figure, and where the advertised number actually sits.
The goal
Nine slips in three stages of three. Stage one is the units — a rate a day, a fee a week, a monthly add-on over instalments. Stage two adds the charges that are not interest: a one-off service fee with the first instalment, a membership fee deducted at drawdown, a guarantee fee on every payment. Stage three shortens the term to a week or two and stacks a deduction on top, which is where the same style of charge turns into three figures a year. Forty seconds a slip, fifty in stage three.
Controls and play
One answer per slip: where the real annual cost sits on the ruler. Drag the handle, use the minus and plus buttons, or press the arrow keys for one step and Page Up and Page Down for ten; Home and End go to the ends. The readout under the ruler always shows the percentage the current step stands for, so you aim at a number rather than at a pixel. Enter submits. There is no second input: what the loan actually paid out is shown in the reveal, not typed in.
Points and streaks
Within four steps of the answer is a hit: 100 points before multipliers. Within ten steps scores half and keeps your streak. Anything further scores nothing and costs one of three lives. Because the ruler is logarithmic, those are ratios and not percentage points — four steps is 0.83× to 1.20× of the answer, whatever the answer is. Stage two slips are worth 1.3 times as much and stage three 1.6. The multiplier rises half a step every three scoring answers, up to three times. There is no speed bonus: paying for speed would pay for guessing.
Finishing and results
The round ends after the ninth slip, or when the third life goes — and the third miss still opens its reveal first, because the reveal is the point. The grade counts a hit as one and a near miss as half, weighted by stage, over the slips you actually answered; a round of nine near misses is a C rather than a top grade. The result page sorts every annual cost you met from smallest to largest, and a round cut short lists the slips it never dealt so the stage-two and stage-three lessons are not lost. Those are shown, not counted.
Replay and progress
Every round is dealt fresh from a seed. The share text carries one, plus the version of the card bank it was dealt from, and opening it deals the same nine slips with the same amounts, terms and charges. If the bank has moved on, the round still opens on that seed and a banner says it may differ. "New round" draws a new seed and drops the old link from the address bar. Leaving mid-round keeps the slip you were on and the time that was left on it; the clock stops when the page is hidden and starts again when it is back.
Language and context
Same arithmetic, same figures, both languages — the answer depends on a ratio, so one seed is one round either way, and only the currency symbol and the wording differ. The nine ways of quoting a price are the ways both markets quote them: a rate per ten-thousand a day, a service fee deducted from the drawdown and a guarantee fee per period on one side, a fee-per-term rollover and a flat weekly charge on the other. The ruler carries one published reference per language, each with its date, its publisher and who it applies to: four times the one-year Loan Prime Rate on the Chinese side, the 36% Military Lending Act ceiling — which covers service members and their dependents, and nobody else — on the English one.
This round covers
01A fee a day is not a small number a year›
0.05% a day — five in every ten thousand — is 18.25% a year, and that is the harmless end of this game. The same quote with a 10% deduction at drawdown over 14 days is 310%: the deduction is both a cost and a cut in the principal, so it moves the answer twice.
02Every charge counts, not just the one called interest›
A service fee, a membership fee, a guarantee fee and an insurance premium are all paid to borrow, so all four belong in the annual cost. The mainland disclosure rules and the US finance-charge rules agree on that; what they differ on is how the figure is assembled, which is why this game says what method it used.
03What arrived is the principal, not what the contract says›
If 2,400 of a 12,000 loan is taken as a membership fee before the money lands, you borrowed 9,600 and are repaying against 12,000. Dividing by the contract amount gives 13% where the real figure is 57.8%. The reveal prints both, because the ruler cannot tell them apart on the shortest cards.
04A rollover does not change the rate, only the bill›
Rolling a seven-day loan over four times charges the fee five times over 35 days. The annual cost is identical to the first week's; the bill is five times one term's. A rate that does not move is the reason an annual figure alone never tells you what a loan will cost you.
05A monthly rate does not annualise by twelve›
0.8% a month on the full amount over twelve instalments looks like 9.6% a year. It is 17.3%: the fee is charged on the whole amount every month while what you owe falls to about half. This is the one misreading that is only 1.8 times out, which is why the game stops at twelve, eighteen and twenty-four instalments.
Questions people ask
What is the real APR on a payday loan?+
It depends on the fee and the term, and the term is what does the damage. A 15 fee on 100 borrowed for 14 days is 391% a year — that is the CFPB's own worked example, and it is the first case this game is tested against. The same fee over 90 days would be about 61%. A short term is what turns a small-sounding fee into a three-figure annual number.
How do I turn 0.05% a day into an annual rate?+
Multiply by 365, not by 30 and then by 12. 0.05% a day is 18.25% a year. The two common slips are annualising a daily rate as if it were monthly, and stopping at the monthly figure — both land far off the ruler this game uses, which is why they are the misreadings it marks.
Which annualisation does the game use?+
The nominal one: the periodic internal rate of return multiplied by the number of periods in a year, on a 365-day year. All interest and all directly related fees are in it, a fee deducted at drawdown comes out of the principal, and contingent costs — late interest, penalties — are in none of it. A lender's own disclosure table converts each charge separately and adds them up, which gives a slightly different figure for the same loan; the number here is the one you can check yourself.
What is the rule of thumb on screen, and is it exact?+
Cost ÷ money in hand ÷ days held × 365. On a loan with one repayment at the end it is not an approximation at all — it is the definition written another way, and the game labels it exact. Over instalments it can read high or low: high where a fee is charged on the full amount every period while your balance falls, low where a one-off fee is paid with the first instalment, which the exact figure weights more heavily than the average days the rule divides by. Every instalment slip prints its own signed deviation, and the sampling keeps that deviation inside the hit band so working the rule gets you a score.
Does the ruler say whether a loan is legal?+
No, and deliberately. The ruler carries one published reference per language with its date, its publisher and who it applies to — four times the one-year Loan Prime Rate on the Chinese side, which is a judicial-protection ceiling for private lending and not a cap on what may be quoted; 36% MAPR on the English side, which applies to covered borrowers under the Military Lending Act and to nobody else. Neither takes any part in the scoring.
Are late fees and penalties included?+
No. An incurred late charge is a contingent cost: it depends on what happens after the loan, not on the cost of performing it. Folding it into an annual rate would teach a worst case as if it were a disclosure. It is in a knowledge card on the result page instead.
Does a shared link always deal the same nine slips?+
Yes, within the same card bank. The link carries the seed and the bank's version, and the seed fixes the purposes, the amounts, the terms, the charges and the order. The same seed is the same round in both languages, down to the figures. If the bank has been updated since the link was made, the round still opens on that seed and a banner says it may differ from the one that was shared.
