How to play Santa’s Route Planner
On Christmas Eve, Santa visits each place when the clocks there strike midnight. Because the Earth spins, midnight does not happen everywhere at once. It starts in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, in Kiribati, and moves west around the world, one time zone at a time. Last of all it reaches places like Hawaii, and tiny islands such as Niue and American Samoa.
In each round you get ten countries, each on a card with a little globe that shows where it is. Drag the cards so the country that reaches midnight first is at the top and the last one is at the bottom. On a phone you can also tap one card and then another to swap them. On a computer, use the up and down arrows to move, and space to pick up and put down a card.
Press Check my route. Cards in the right place glow green, and wrong ones give a wobble. Then the cards slide into the true order while the midnight line sweeps across the map, showing each country’s clock time and the time midnight arrives there on your own clock. You also get a fun fact about time zones.
There are three rounds, each with a different mix from more than thirty countries. Every card in the right place scores 30 points, plus one point for every second left on the clock, so being quick and right gives the best score. A tip: the more hours a country is ahead of UTC, the sooner its midnight comes.