Interpreting Your Share Picture
What every color and symbol in the Pyralinks share actually means.
Published January 1, 2026 · Updated April 17, 2026
When you finish a Pyralinks puzzle, you can share a compact summary of your result. That snippet is more than a trophy - it encodes the story of your solve in a form that anyone who has played the same puzzle can read at a glance. This guide walks through every element of the share so you know exactly what you are looking at when a friend posts their result.
The Layout
The share shows the puzzle pyramid in a canonical arrangement - a fixed, standard layout independent of how nodes happened to be positioned when you solved the puzzle. This matters because it means you can compare a friend's share directly against your own completed puzzle and see which links matched up at different solving stages. The canonical layout removes any ambiguity about which node is which.
The header shows the puzzle name, date, and whether the puzzle was solved (✓) or not solved within the allowed guesses (✗). A medal icon (🏅) also appears in the header if the puzzle was completed while Expert Mode was enabled. Below the header are your number of guesses, then your time and swap count (can be disabled in Settings), and then the pyramid itself.
What the Colors Mean
Each square is colored to show whether the corresponding link was correct on the first guess, a later guess, or remained incorrect throughout.
| Symbol | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 🟪 Purple | Correct on the first guess |
| 🟩 Green | Correct on a later guess — does not indicate which one |
| 🟥 Red | Still incorrect when guesses ran out (unsolved puzzle) |
An all-purple pyramid means every link was already in the right place on the very first guess - a perfect solve with no feedback needed. A mix of purple and green tells a richer story: you can see which parts of the puzzle clicked immediately and which required more work.
What About Math Puzzles?
Pyrithmetic works differently from other puzzle types. In word and bigram puzzles, each square in the share represents a single link between two nodes. In Pyrithmetic, each square represents an entire expression - the two operands, the operator, and the result all together. A square is colored only when that whole expression is correct simultaneously. This means a single Pyrithmetic square corresponds to a larger portion of the puzzle than a single square in other puzzle types.
Interpreting an Unsolved Puzzle
If the puzzle header shows an X, the puzzle ran out of guesses before being fully solved. In that case, some links will appear as red squares (🟥) rather than green or purple. Red links represent connections that were still incorrect when the last guess was submitted. The purple and green squares still carry the same meaning - they show which connections were confirmed correct at some point during the solve.
An unsolved share is still a record of effort. The third example above shows a Pyraphemes puzzle where several links resisted all four guesses. You can see exactly how close the solver got and which part of the pyramid held out.
The Expert Mode Medal
A medal icon in the share header means the puzzle was solved with Expert Mode enabled. In Expert Mode, broken link indicators are hidden - after submitting a guess you see which links are correct, but the record of which connections were previously wrong is not shown. You have to hold that information in your head across guesses.
The medal is a signal to anyone reading the share that the result was achieved without that assistance. It does not change the color coding of the pyramid itself - the squares still reflect which guess confirmed each connection. The medal simply adds context about the conditions the puzzle was solved under. Learn more in the Broken Links and Expert Mode article.
Quick Reference
- All purple (🟪): Every link correct on the first guess - a perfect solve.
- Green (🟩): Link was correct, but took more than one guess.
- Red (🟥): Link was still wrong when guesses ran out (unsolved puzzle).
- Header order: Guess count (🎯), then time (🕓), then swaps (🔀).
- Canonical layout: Fixed arrangement - compare directly to your own result.
- Medal icon: Puzzle was completed with Expert Mode on (no broken link hints).
- Math puzzles: Each square represents a full expression (operands + operator + result), not a single link.
Comparing Notes with Friends
Because the layout is canonical, two people who solved the same puzzle can compare their shares side by side and see exactly where their paths diverged. One player might have nailed the left subtree immediately while struggling with the root; another might have had the root locked in from guess one but worked through the leaves slowly. The share text makes that conversation specific rather than vague.
This is the same instinct that made Wordle shares so compelling: a compact, spoiler-free representation that communicates the shape of a solve without giving away the answer. Pyralinks extends that idea to a richer two-dimensional structure, so there is more to read and more to discuss.
