How to Play LinkedIn Pinpoint With Friends: Group Strategies and Competitions
How to Play LinkedIn Pinpoint With Friends: Group Strategies and Competitions
Playing LinkedIn Pinpoint alone is fun. Playing it with friends? Way more fun. I started a daily Pinpoint group with three coworkers about six months ago, and it has transformed the game from a solitary 2-minute distraction into a genuinely social daily ritual. We compete, we strategize together, and we have learned things about each other's knowledge gaps that no team-building exercise could ever reveal. Here is everything you need to know about making Pinpoint a group activity.
Why Play Pinpoint With Others?
The daily puzzle is the same for everyone. This shared experience is what makes Pinpoint naturally social. When everyone in your group sees the same clues and the same category, you have an instant conversation topic. "Did you get the spice one today?" "I needed four clues, it killed me." "Wait, you got it in one? How?" These micro-conversations build connection without requiring anyone to share personal information or be vulnerable. It is low-stakes social bonding through a shared puzzle.
Setting Up a Pinpoint Group
You do not need any special tools. Here is how my group works:
- Create a group chat. We use a Slack channel, but WhatsApp, Discord, or iMessage all work fine.
- Set a daily check-in time. We post our results around 9 AM after everyone has had a chance to play.
- Use a simple scoring format. We just post our clue count: "3 today" or "Got it in 2!"
- Keep it pressure-free. Nobody is keeping a running leaderboard (although we could — more on that below). The goal is shared fun, not competition stress.
Competition Formats
If your group wants more structure than casual result-sharing, here are some competition formats I have tried or heard about:
Format 1: Daily Low Score Wins
Simple and effective. Whoever uses the fewest clues each day wins. Track it on a shared spreadsheet. At the end of the week, the person with the most daily wins gets bragging rights (or buys coffee for the group). My group ran this for a month and it was surprisingly competitive. The key insight: different knowledge domains favor different people. Our HR person crushed the "professions" and "soft skills" categories. Our engineer dominated "science" and "technology." The competition balanced itself naturally.
Format 2: Weekly Average
Instead of daily winners, calculate each person's average clue count for the week. Lowest average wins. This format rewards consistency over lucky one-clue solves. I prefer this format because it smooths out the variance — nobody wins just because they happened to know the category on a single day.
Format 3: The Collaborative Solve
This is my favorite format and the one that builds the most team cohesion. Your group plays the daily puzzle together at the same time. Each person can contribute guesses, but only one guess per person per round. You take turns guessing, and the team's score is the number of clues it took when someone finally guessed correctly. This format turns Pinpoint from a solo game into a team brainstorming exercise. It also reveals how different people approach the same clues, which is genuinely educational.
Format 4: The Streak Challenge
Track your group's combined streak — how many consecutive days everyone in the group solves the puzzle. If one person misses a day, the group streak resets. This creates gentle accountability. You do not want to be the person who broke the 47-day group streak because you forgot to play on Saturday.
Group Strategy Tips
Playing with others changes the strategy in interesting ways. Here are some things I have learned from group play:
Share Category Observations, Not Answers
After everyone has solved the daily puzzle, discuss what you noticed. "I almost guessed 'types of fabric' before 'textile crafts' on clue three" — this kind of discussion helps everyone learn alternative category framings. It is especially helpful for understanding which categories the game accepts. Our guide to Pinpoint answer alternatives covers this in detail.
Identify Each Person's Strengths
In my group, we know that Sarah is great at food categories, Mike crushes geography, and I handle science and tech. This knowledge is useful in collaborative formats — we can strategically order our guesses to maximize the chance that each person's domain expertise gets deployed at the right moment. It also means we learn from each other. Mike has taught me more about world geography through Pinpoint discussions than any class ever did.
Use Unlimited Practice Together
My group occasionally does a practice session using our unlimited mode. We pick a time, start the same puzzle simultaneously, and race. These sessions are less about the daily puzzle and more about having fun while building skills. Plus, seeing someone else's thought process in real-time is invaluable for learning new category recognition strategies.
Etiquette for Pinpoint Groups
A few unwritten rules that keep group play fun:
- No spoilers before everyone has played. In our Slack channel, we use spoiler tags for category discussion until everyone has posted their result.
- No shaming bad scores. Everyone has five-clue days. Be supportive, not competitive to the point of meanness.
- Celebrate great solves. When someone gets it in one clue, that is worth recognizing. It is rare and impressive.
- Do not cheat. Looking up the answer before playing defeats the entire purpose. Play honestly and share honestly.
Building Community Through Puzzles
The biggest surprise from my Pinpoint group has been how much it has strengthened our working relationships. We have inside jokes about recurring categories. We know each other's blind spots. We celebrate streaks together. It sounds silly — it is a 2-minute word game — but the daily shared experience builds connection in a way that monthly team lunches never have. If you work remotely or have a distributed team, I especially recommend starting a Pinpoint group. It is a low-effort, high-return social ritual.
Ready to start your own group? Send your friends to our how to play guide so they can learn the basics, then create your group chat and start sharing results. Check the daily puzzle to get started today.
Frequently Asked Questions
LinkedIn does not have a built-in multiplayer mode, but you can play simultaneously by starting the daily puzzle at the same time in a group chat. Coordinate over video call or messaging, and share guesses in real-time. The collaborative format where each person takes turns guessing works especially well for this.
Create a group chat (Slack, WhatsApp, Discord), have everyone play the daily puzzle, and share results using a consistent format like clue count. Track scores on a shared spreadsheet. Choose a competition format: daily low score wins, weekly average, collaborative solve, or streak challenge. Keep it low-pressure and fun.
Not yet — LinkedIn Pinpoint is a single-player daily puzzle. However, you can compare results with your LinkedIn connections after playing. For real-time multiplayer, coordinate with friends over a messaging platform and play simultaneously, sharing guesses as you go.
The weekly average format works best for most groups because it rewards consistency over lucky one-clue solves. Calculate each person's average clue count for the week — lowest average wins. For more social fun, try the collaborative solve format where the team takes turns guessing and the group score is when someone finally gets it right.