How to play Tangent

Tangent is Stat!'s anatomy game. A single structure in the body is hidden: an organ, a bone, a muscle, a blood vessel or a nerve. Every structure you guess lands on a map of the body, colored by how close it is to the target. Name the exact structure in ten guesses or fewer.

The goal

Find the hidden structure. Each guess is one try, and you have ten. There are no hints in Tangent: the body map is your guide.

Three daily tiers

Tangent draws on 349 structures: 56 organs, 73 bones, 75 muscles, 65 blood vessels and 80 nerves. Each day brings three separate Tangent puzzles, one in each tier:

You can only guess structures from the tier you are playing, and the search field tells you which one it is.

The body map

The map shows the body from the front, in anatomical position, with R on the left of the screen and L on the right, because anatomy always describes the patient's left and right. (Our guide to anatomical terms and planes explains why.)

• Organs are drawn as outlines, long bones, vessels and nerves as lines, and small structures as dots.
• Structures at the back of the body are drawn dashed, and a "Behind" key appears when any are on the map.
• The view zooms in on the area where your guesses are.

How closeness is scored

Every guess gets a closeness score. The score depends on how far your guess lies from the hidden structure on the map, measured between their nearest parts and adjusted for how spread out the target is, and on how far apart they are from front to back. Only the exact answer scores 100.

Each guess is colored by its score:

A proximity spectrum under the map, running from Far to Close, shows where your latest guess falls.

The guess list

Your guesses are listed closest first. Tap any guess, in the list or on the map, to pick it out: it is drawn on top with its name, the other guesses fade, and the spectrum shows its score. Tap it again to clear it. This makes it easy to compare two candidates and see which direction you should move.

Winning and losing

Name the exact structure to win. If your tenth guess is wrong, the answer is drawn on the map and labeled. Either way, the result screen names the structure and describes it.

Strategy: how to home in fast

Open in the middle. A first guess near the center of the body, or in the middle of the tier's range, tells you which half of the body to search. A guess at an extreme corner tells you much less.

Triangulate. Two guesses with different scores tell you more than one. If a guess in the upper abdomen is amber and one in the chest is red, the target is lower, not higher. Move toward the warmer guess.

Remember depth. Closeness includes front-to-back distance, so a structure directly behind your guess can still score lower than you expect. If a guess sits right over the target area but stays teal, think deeper or more superficial. Dashed structures on the map are the ones at the back.

Think in neighborhoods. Once a guess is green, the answer is close by. List the structures that share that region, like the organs near the transpyloric plane in our guide to surface anatomy, and work through them.

Use the tier's shape. Vessels and nerves often run in bundles together, and bones sit under muscles, so in the mixed tiers a close guess of one kind can point you to a neighbor of the other.

Why it works as learning

Knowing where structures sit in relation to each other is the foundation of the physical examination, imaging and surgery. Tangent turns that spatial knowledge into a game of hotter and colder, and the three daily tiers keep you working across the whole body. Our guide to learning with daily puzzles explains why this kind of practice sticks.