Tango answers archive

October 2026 (19)

September 2026 (27)

Using the list: dates, numbers and the reset

Tango rolls over at midnight Pacific time, and a new entry joins the top of the list at that moment. The summary column reads "6×6 board" every day because every Tango board we hold is 6×6; what changes from day to day is how many symbols are given and how many signs sit between cells.

Puzzle numbers are printed next to each date on the month pages. The archive runs from #696 on 3 September 2026 to #733 on 10 October 2026, with one gap: 5 September (#698), a board we don't hold. If you only know a number, count from either end of that range — the numbers advance by exactly one per day.

Players outside the Americas should search by number rather than date. Midnight Pacific lands in the afternoon or evening across much of Asia and Australia, so the puzzle someone there solves on a Wednesday morning is filed under Tuesday here. The month page draws each finished grid with its signs in place. The boards in our window gave away between 4 and 12 symbols at the start, which on a 6×6 board leaves between 24 and 32 cells to deduce, depending on the day.

Givens and signs pull in opposite directions

The obvious way to judge a Tango board is to count the symbols already placed. Our archive suggests that is only half the picture. Across the 37 Tango puzzles from 3 September to 10 October 2026 on HintSheet, the number of given symbols ran from 4 to 12, and the number of = and × signs ran from 2 to 8. The boards with the fewest givens tended to carry the most signs.

All four boards that opened with only four symbols had six or more signs, averaging 6.5. The five boards that opened with ten or more symbols averaged 4.2 signs. Three of those four-given boards were Sunday puzzles. In other words, when LinkedIn takes symbols away it usually hands back information as signs, and a sparse-looking board is rarely an empty one.

The signs themselves were split almost exactly in half: 84 = and 85 ×, across 169 signs in total. Slightly more of them joined cells stacked vertically (91) than cells side by side (78). Four boards used only × signs and four used only = signs; the rest mixed both.

Givens were also spread thinly across rows. On 33 of the 37 boards at least one row started with no given symbol, and the average board had 2.2 empty rows and 2.3 empty columns. Those lines get filled entirely from the three-of-each count, the no-three-in-a-row rule and whatever signs cross them.

Mondays had a habit of their own. Three of the five Monday boards (#700, #707 and #714) used only = signs, and a fourth (#728) used only × signs. Across the rest of the week, single-type boards were rarer: four more in 32 puzzles. A board that uses only one kind of sign is a useful drill, because it forces you to read that sign in every situation instead of leaning on the other.

None of this makes the sparse boards trivial, but it changes where you look first: on a board with four givens, the signs are the clues.

Clue counts: a weekday breakdown

Unlike some of LinkedIn's other games, Tango showed no steady Monday-to-Sunday climb in our data. Sunday stands out for giving the fewest symbols, and Friday for the most signs; the rest of the week sits close together.

Seen board by board rather than by weekday, four signs was the most common count (13 of 37 boards), followed by three and six signs (7 boards each), five signs (4), and two, seven and eight signs (2 each). Givens clustered even more tightly: 16 boards started with eight symbols, 8 with six, 4 each with four and ten, 2 each with seven and nine, and a single board with twelve.

Added together, givens plus signs ranged from 9 clues on the sparsest board to 16 on the busiest. Sunday had the lowest average total, 10.2, and Saturday the highest, 13.8, so the two weekend days sat at opposite ends of the week rather than together.

Can a finished grid teach you anything?

Every Tango board has the same size and the same three rules, so the only variable is the clue layout, and a finished grid is a good thing to study. Take an archived grid and check each sign against it: every = joins two matching symbols, every × two different ones. Then look for the places where a sign sits beside a pair of matching symbols, because that is where the sign did its work during the solve.

The most common profile in our window was eight givens (16 of 37 boards) with four signs (13 of 37), so a day like that is a fair stand-in for a typical board. When you open the live puzzle, count its givens and signs before you start and compare with the table: a day with few givens and many signs, like three of the four-given Sundays in our window, is one to solve from the signs outward.

When you check your work against an archived grid, think back to where you first used a sign. If you reached for the = and × marks only after filling the obvious cells, try the reverse order on the next board: the HintSheet Tango guide argues that the signs change the solving order, and the low-given boards in this archive are where that shows most. A few individual boards make good benchmarks. #718 on 25 September had the most signs in the window, eight, paired with only four givens. #705 on 12 September had the most givens, twelve, with just three signs. #696 and #728 carried only two signs each. Looking at those four finished grids side by side shows the full range of how a Tango board can be balanced, all on the same 6×6 grid under the same rules.

A checklist for an archive session

The routine fits around the daily puzzle and takes a minute on top of it.

• Before you start today's board, count the given symbols and the signs.
• Compare both counts with the weekday table above to see what kind of day it is.
• If there are six or fewer givens, read every sign before placing anything.
• Fill what the signs and the no-three-in-a-row rule force, then use the three-of-each count.
• When you finish, open the day's entry here and check the grid cell by cell.
• Note the first cell you placed using a sign, and try to place a sign-driven cell earlier next time.

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