What's changed

October 2026

Which tax year? Every game that uses income tax, National Insurance or student loans now uses the 2025/26 figures, because papers for the June 2027 exams are set before the tax year begins. We move on a year each April.

Every answer checked again. This month we went back through the games and worked out every answer again from each question's own data, by script, rather than relying on the answers typed in when the games were written. Where we found a wrong answer, a true statement offered as a wrong option, or a question using a rule it didn't state, we fixed it. Some games were taken off the home page while that happened; they're back, apart from a handful still being worked on. Every game that has been through this now has its own check that runs whenever the site changes, so a fault can't quietly come back. We're working through the rest of the library in the same way.

New

• The Headteacher's Car Trap is back, rewritten, with a new antagonist: Mr Strictman, the deputy head, has rigged the staff car park before the governors arrive. Bounds, arc length and quadratics.
• Just Pythag It, Bruv: Pythagoras' theorem in three rounds, starting with whole-number triangles. In the Essentials section.
• Linear Equation Solver now asks "What is the optimal move here?" Every move that is equally quick scores full marks, and a move that works but takes longer scores half, with the quicker route shown. A wrong move tells you what went wrong, such as dividing only one side.
• Correlation or Coincidence is back in the Essentials section, rebuilt from scratch: 42 questions and three answers to choose from: a real link, pure coincidence, or something else causing both. When it's something else, the game tells you what. The jokes stayed in.
• Essentials section launched: around 30 games covering core Foundation topics, organised by topic, for students working towards a grade 4. Find it at maffsgames.co.uk/essentials/.

Corrected

• Corrected: Shape Shifter's rotations were labelled the wrong way round and are now right. Probability Pioneer, Estimation Engine, Decimal Detective and Negative Number Line each had an answer or a marking slip, now fixed, and every fix is now checked automatically.
• Answers offered twice. In 39 questions across 12 games, the right answer was also offered in a second form, for example 3 and √9, or n² + n and n(n + 1), so a student who chose the second form was marked wrong. Each now offers a genuine wrong answer instead, based on a common mistake. We searched every question bank on the site for this fault and fixed every case where the question doesn't ask for a particular form. Games: Binomial Blaster, Circle Theorem Spotter, Curling Friction, Differentiation Duel, Force Resolver, Index Laws, Probability Paradox, Probability Pioneer, Proportion Blaster, Sequence Solver, Simultaneous Solver and Trig Identity Duel.
• Wrong answer keys. We worked out every answer again from each question's own data. Stat Attack: the variance was wrong in 17 of its 36 data sets and the standard deviation in 13, and one median class was wrong; the summary sentences now quote the right figures. Graph Sketcher: in 10 of its 45 graphs, a table value or a reading didn't match the equation printed above it. Growth and Decay: in 11 of its 45 scenarios, an answer didn't match the model on screen, including three not rounded to the significant figures the question asked for. Checked automatically.
• Tax Theft. Above £100,000, income tax is now worked out as HMRC does it, with the tax bands applied to taxable income; before, those salaries were under-taxed by £500 to £2,514. Answers are now marked to the penny from the figures on the payslip, instead of within £1 or £2. If you type the right amount in the wrong form, such as £1250.7 for £1250.70, the game asks you to fix it rather than marking it wrong; in an exam it would cost the mark. Two Medium salaries were over £100,000, which needs a Hard-level step; they're now below it. Checked automatically.
• Core Maths Paper 1. Two questions used 12% for employee National Insurance, the rate before 2024; they now use 8%, the 2025/26 rate. One of them, a monthly budget, also had the wrong answer marked correct; that's fixed. The student loan question now says which plan it is (Plan 2) and uses the 2025/26 threshold, and a wrong option in the income tax question that matched no real mistake is replaced with one that does. Checked automatically.
• Better Value. The job-offer question said tax and National Insurance take about 25% of salary. At those salaries it's about 15 to 18%, so it now says roughly a sixth, and the worked answer uses that. The right answer hasn't changed. Checked automatically.
• About page and home page. The About page overstated how little data we collect. We collect no personal data, but we do record anonymous gameplay statistics, such as which questions are answered correctly, to improve the games. Our privacy page sets out exactly what. The About and home pages now say so. They also no longer say every game is mapped to an exam specification: 68 of 96 are, and the spec map is being extended to the rest. "Safe for school networks" now reads "built to be safe for school networks", because we can't promise how every school's network is set up.
• Circle Theorem Spotter: two answers corrected. One question had no correct answer, and another marked the right answer wrong because its wording and diagram disagreed. Both are fixed, and every calculation in the game is now checked automatically.
• Split It now marks money to the penny. An answer a few pence out could previously be accepted. Now only the exact amount is. You can type the £ or € sign, and if the amount is right but written as £12.3, it asks you to fix how it's written rather than marking you down. Recipe and speed questions now say how to round.
• Single-question fix: Sequence Solver offered a correct formula for the sum of a geometric series as a wrong answer. It's now a genuine wrong one.

Clarified

• Questions say which rule they use. Where maths has more than one convention, the games checked so far now say which one: for example, which method to use for quartiles.
• Questions now say which form they want. 100 questions in Standard Form Blitz and Surd Simplifier now say what form the answer should take, for example "Give your answer in standard form" or "Rationalise and simplify". In one, the answer is now written in the form the question asks for; no others changed.

Improved

• Correlation or Coincidence: now 84 questions, twice as many as before.
• Expectation Station: now 40 questions at each level, and every probability table has exactly one right completion.
• One answer per question. In some games a second tap, a double-click or the Enter key could mark an answer twice or skip a question. The games updated so far accept exactly one answer per question; the rest are following.
• Links at the bottom of the page. On phones, the bar of links at the bottom of every page ran off both edges, so some couldn't be reached. It now scrolls sideways.
• Split It is the first game in the site's new shared design: a cleaner look that fits a phone slightly better, including in dyslexia-friendly mode (Aa). Its levels are now called Foundation and GCSE, not year groups.
• Next button. In 15 games, pressing Next twice quickly could skip a question. That's fixed. After a wrong answer, Next now waits three seconds so there's time to read the working, and the button is bigger and easier to tap on a phone.
• Phones. New Shapes, Better Value, Formula Plug-In, Expected Damage and the home page now fit a phone screen far better (a few long explanations still need a scroll).

September 2026

About "checked automatically": every time we change the site, a program works out each answer from scratch and blocks the change if any don't match. Where a game says this, its answers are re-checked on every update, not just once.

New

• Six Sevens, Bruv — times-tables recall, built for the Essentials section.
• Free Daily Pizza — fractions, decimals and percentages, with a fresh set of ten every day.
• Distinctly Average — mean, median, mode and range, KS3 and GCSE.
• Linear Equation Solver — solve equations by choosing the inverse operation. 141 questions.
• Quadratic Factoriser — rebuilt, with two new levels: Higher (where the x² term has a coefficient, using the AC method, with a tutorial that fades as you improve) and the quadratic formula.
• Log Laws — new Solve mode: apply the laws step by step.
• Parent guides — 20 guides explaining what your child is learning and how to help at home.

Escape rooms

• Escape rooms went live on 1 September: short maths escape rooms for groups of three or four, built to finish a lesson in under 15 minutes.
• A teacher told us the room stories read as machine-written. They were right. We took the rooms down and are rewriting them one at a time, each around its own character. Six are rewritten and back: The Great Hamster Heist, The P.E. Store Rebellion, The Prom Budget Embezzlement, The Canteen Menu Hack, The Heatwave Mutiny and The Rugby Mud Bath.
• Two new rooms for GCSE Foundation classes: The Comic Caper (factors, primes and HCF) and The Kiln Disaster (multiples, LCM and order of operations).
• The Headteacher's Car Trap and The IT Teacher's Vengeance are offline until their rewrites are done.

Corrected

Games that didn't work:

• Modular Battle had never been playable: it froze on about a quarter of questions. Fixed. Its dot picture also showed the wrong remainder on some questions; it now shows the right one, and fades out once you no longer need it.
• Chart Interrogator's score bar didn't work from March to September. Fixed. We then re-checked the marking on all 40 charts: at least 14 were marked wrongly — some rejected an accurate reading, some accepted almost anything, and one histogram marked a true answer wrong. Every chart now marks against what's actually drawn, with a tolerance that suits its scale. Checked automatically.
• Differentiation Duel wouldn't load at any level. Fixed.
• Expectation Station couldn't be completed, and one scenario could never be won. Both fixed, and the game now works in exact fractions so rounding can't trip it up.
• Matrix Crunch's rotation questions had never worked since they were added in March. Fixed, along with a question that showed the same option twice.

Questions with wrong answers:

• Test the Claim — we recomputed every answer. 16 of 48 questions had an error, two of them reaching the wrong accept/reject decision. The correct action was also always the second option, so it could be guessed; options are now shuffled. Checked automatically.
• Normal Navigator — we recomputed every answer and corrected 9 of 47, most in the final decimal place. Earlier in the month we also fixed one question with no correct option, one that accepted the wrong value, and a fault that could show the same question twice in a game. The diagram no longer gives the answer away before you respond. Checked automatically.
• Trig Worms — about 12% of questions described a triangle that can't exist. The question generator is fixed, and options can no longer repeat.
• Graph Transformer marked the route you took, not the graph you ended with, so some correct answers were rejected. It now marks the graph. Three puzzles were also fixed: two couldn't be completed and one had the wrong target. Checked automatically.
• Spot the Error — 2 of 110 fixed: one couldn't be completed and one showed a wrong figure.
• Distinctly Average — on launch day, the right answer to bimodal questions was the only option written "x and y", which gave it away. Fixed within the day. Checked automatically.
• The Great Hamster Heist (escape room) — one lock asked for the greatest volume a rounded measurement could give, a value that can never actually be reached. It now asks for the smallest, and every room follows that rule.
• Single-question fixes: Angle Ace (angles on a straight line drawn incorrectly), Proof Builder (an unfinished note showing as an option, and two wrong answers that were actually right), Probability Paradox (an example that didn't show the paradox), Formula Unlocked (an option shown twice, and an unfinished hint), and Coordinate Geometry Dash (two questions, including one that marked √50 wrong when the answer was 5√2).

Display:

• In Component Crusher, Factor Theorem and Test the Claim, question text lost its spaces when shown ("Whatisthereversetranslation?"). Fixed.
• Scale Factor Scaling and Unit Converter: worked solutions corrected.
• SUVAT: equations now properly typeset, and two hard-to-read colours fixed.

Clarified

• Maths Court and Core Maths Paper 2A: one question each reworded. No answers changed.

Withdrawn

• Regression Rumble is offline while we rebuild it. Most of its scenarios didn't hold together mathematically.

Improved

• Dyslexia-friendly mode (Aa) now actually shows the OpenDyslexic font. Until 28 September it never did, for anyone: the font was loaded from an address that didn't exist, so Aa mode only added spacing. The font is now served from MaffsGames itself, so if your network lets you open a game, the font loads too. 94 games.
• Wrong answers wait for you. In 25 games, a wrong answer used to move on after a fixed delay, often before you'd read why. Now the working stays on screen until you press Next.
• Leaderboards: 13 games that could never reach the leaderboards now can — any finished game counts. Two games where a lower score is better are held off until the boards can rank them the right way round. The score ticker on the home page now shows live standings instead of out-of-date badges.
• Session length: five games offered more questions than they had, then stopped short. They now only offer what they can fill.
• New and Updated badges on the home page mark games with real new work, and expire after half a term.
• Newsletter: the sign-up form never worked — everyone who tried got an error. We've removed it. There is no newsletter yet.