After 3.33 Years, Someone Beat Threes, the Mobile Game

The idea of Threes is to slide together ones and twos to make larger numbers. Then you slide the larger numbers into each other, seeking to make more and more sizable multiples of three. Christine Chan called the design of the game “simple, elegant, and downright charming.” The number tiles are minimalist, but each stil has its own unique “face” at the bottom of the tile. Chan pointed out that each number also has its own personality and voice.

The goal of Threes is to get as many high-number multiples of three as you can before the grid fills up and you run out of moves. Without any in-app purchases, energy to play, power-ups, or any of the other “gimmicks” that seem to be the standard fare for games, Threes is pure puzzle fun. Easy to learn, but difficult to master, Threes was thought to be unbeatable. After all, there are always larger multiples of three, right? However, someone beat Threes.

It turns out, the developers did program an end to the game, we just never knew about it because nobody ever found it. After exactly 3.33 years, as confirmed by one of the developers, Greg Wohlwend, someone beat Threes, finally. That “someone” is known in the Twitterverse as @ThreesPorn.

When it happened, @ThreesPorn was in a state of disbelief. Confetti began to fall down the screen, and a high score of 1,594,458 was displayed. For those keeping count, that high score is a multiple of three, too. Multiply three by 531,486 and you come up with 1,594,458.

Someone beat Threes after 3.33 years

The only disappointing aspect of the fact that someone beat Threes is that it wasn’t done on an iPhone. I guess we can’t have everything, though. Excuse me, I’m going to start making multiples of three again. Let’s see if I can beat the game, too.