How to play Build Your XI

Build Your XI gives you a team sheet and one rule. The pitch shows eleven shirts in a formation, a few of them already filled, and every empty shirt needs a player who fits the rule and can play that position. Fill as many as you can, as fast as you can, and the squad is scored out of 1,000. Then send it: a friend gets the same rule, the same formation and the same players given at the start, on the same clock.

The rule and the given players stay hidden until you press Start, and so does the clock. Before that you only see the formation and how many shirts you will have to fill.

The three kinds of rule

• A club: "Played for Real Madrid". Any player with at least one senior appearance for the club fits, in any season.
• A club and an era: "Played for West Ham after 2010". The player needs at least one season at the club that started in that year or later; a long career that only reached the club in the 1990s does not count.
• A nationality and a club: "Brazilian nationality and played for Cruzeiro". The player needs both: a senior appearance for the club and a senior cap for that country.

Loans count, as they do in Tic-Tac-Toe. A spell with no appearances does not, and nor do youth or reserve teams. Of the 180 squads in the game, the club-and-era rules use 2010 as their year in 64 and 2000 in 8.

Formations and positions

Every squad is one of three formations: 4-3-3, 4-4-2 or 3-4-3. Each shirt is a position (goalkeeper, full-back, centre-back, defensive or central midfielder, wide midfielder, winger or striker), and a player can only go in a shirt for a position he played. Positions come from each player's listed positions, so a centre-back who sometimes played at full-back counts for both.

A few positions stand in for each other, because a team sheet is not that precise:

• An attacking midfielder fits a central midfield shirt.
• A defensive midfielder fits a central midfield shirt, but a central midfielder does not fit the defensive one.
• A right winger fits a right midfield shirt and the other way round; the same on the left.

Type a name and pick the player from the list. If he fits exactly one empty shirt, he goes straight in. If he fits several, those shirts light up and you choose. If he fits the rule but no empty shirt, or doesn't fit the rule at all, you are told so and the clock keeps running. Each player can be used once.

Easy, Medium and Hard

The level decides how many players are given at the start: three at Easy, two at Medium and one at Hard, so you fill eight, nine or ten shirts. The rules get harder too. Easy rules use the biggest clubs, Medium reaches clubs most fans still know well, and Hard often pairs a nationality with a club, which shrinks every shirt's list of answers.

Three real squads

An Easy squad, "Played for Real Madrid" in a 4-3-3, gave Fabio Cannavaro at centre-back, David Beckham in midfield and Eden Hazard on the left wing. Every empty shirt had plenty of answers: 31 goalkeepers, 28 right-backs and 105 central midfielders fitted. The squad tests speed more than memory.

A Medium squad, "Played for West Ham after 2010" in a 4-4-2, gave Marko Arnautović on the right and Javier Hernández up front. The era narrows it: only 10 goalkeepers fitted, against 52 central midfielders, so the goalkeeper's shirt is the one to think about first.

A Hard squad, "Brazilian nationality and played for Cruzeiro" in a 4-3-3, gave only Müller up front. Nine goalkeepers and 11 left-backs fitted; the centre of midfield had 66. In a squad like this, the full-backs and the goalkeeper decide your score.

The score, out of 1,000

• 720 points for the shirts, split evenly over the ones you have to fill: 90 a shirt at Easy, 80 at Medium and 72 at Hard. An empty shirt scores nothing.
• Up to 180 for rare players, split the same way. A shirt's rarity depends on how well known your player is, and on how many better-known players could have gone there; the most famous answer earns nothing extra.
• A time bonus of up to 100. It stays full for two minutes after Start, then falls to zero at six minutes, and it is scaled by how many shirts you filled.

You can finish early whenever you like. The clock and every pick are checked on Goaler's server, so a squad scores the same on any device. When a friend plays your squad, the higher score wins; an equal score is decided by time, to the hundredth of a second.

Tips

• Fill the thin positions first. Goalkeepers and full-backs usually have the shortest lists.
• Use the given players as a clue to the era: a Hard squad's one given player often tells you which decade to think about.
• Name central midfielders last. They have the most answers, and an attacking or defensive midfielder fits there too.
• For an era rule, think of who played there recently rather than the club's legends.

The rules of the other games are in How to play Tic-Tac-Toe and How to play Bracket. Questions about your games are answered in the FAQ.