How Many Rules Are in The Password Game? The Real Answer Nobody Wants
I discovered The Password Game at 2:47 p.m. on a rainy Thursday in a Chicago coffee shop near Wicker Park. My latte was $5.50 and I had thirty minutes to kill before a meeting. A friend had texted me a link with exactly three words: “Don’t start this.” So obviously I started it. By 3:15 I was whispering curse words at my screen while a barista in a Metallica shirt side-eyed me from behind the espresso machine. That was the day I learned exactly how many rules are in The Password Game, and I have not been the same since.
Here is the short answer up front, because I know you are searching for it: there are 35 rules total. But that number means nothing without context. Rule 34 literally says “Let’s skip this one” and auto-checks itself. Rule 35 demands you memorize your entire monstrous password and retype it from scratch within two minutes. Thirty-five rules sounds like a lot. It is not enough. It is too many. It is the perfect amount of psychological torture.
How Many Rules Are in The Password Game? The Early Traps (1–10)
The first ten rules feel like a joke. Rule 1 says your password must be at least five characters. Fine. Rule 2 says you need a number. Still fine. Rule 3 asks for an uppercase letter, Rule 4 wants a special character. By Rule 5, things get weird: your password must include a Roman numeral. I sat there for four minutes trying to remember whether “VII” was seven or eight. It is seven. I knew that in third grade and forgot it by age thirty-two.
Rule 6 demands the digits in your password add up to 25. Rule 7 wants a month of the year. Rule 8 needs a Roman numeral again, but this time it has to multiply to 35. Rule 9 requires a Roman numeral that, when converted to Arabic numerals, is a prime number. I failed algebra twice in high school at a school in Cleveland, and this game brought back every single anxiety dream I have ever had about math class.
Rule 10 is where the game reveals its true nature. It asks for the current phase of the moon as an emoji. Not the word “moon.” The emoji. And it has to be accurate. I googled “moon phase today” on my phone while the coffee shop WiFi sputtered like a dying lawnmower. Waxing crescent. I pasted it in. The game accepted it. I felt like I had hacked the Pentagon.
Here is what most guides miss about these early rules: they are not actually hard. They are tedious. They force you to build a password that grows longer and more ridiculous with every step. By Rule 10, my password was already something like “Passw0rd!VIIJuly🌒” and I knew deep in my soul that this was only the beginning. If you are still asking yourself how many rules are in the password game, the answer is about to get a lot more complicated than you expect.
How Many Rules Are in The Password Game? The Mind-Benders (11–25)
Rule 11 introduces a chess puzzle. You must include the best move in algebraic notation. I do not play chess. I know what a rook is and that is the end of my knowledge. I spent eleven minutes on a free chess engine website trying to figure out why “Qh5+” was better than “Nf3.” The game did not care about my ignorance. It wanted the right move and it wanted it now.
Rule 12 requires the current day of the week. Rule 13 wants the URL of a specific Google Street View image. Rule 14 asks for the day’s Wordle answer. I do not play Wordle. I had to text my aunt in Detroit, who plays Wordle religiously every morning at 7:00 a.m. like it is church. She replied in thirty seconds. The answer was “CRANE.” Aunt Linda saved my sanity and she does not even know what The Password Game is.
Rule 15 introduces Paul. Paul is an egg emoji that hatches into a chicken. You must feed Paul with caterpillar emojis. If Paul dies, you lose. I named my chicken Paul after my landlord, who also demands constant attention and gets angry when ignored. Paul the chicken and Paul the landlord have more in common than I am comfortable admitting.
Rule 16 adds a fire emoji that spreads across your password, destroying characters. Rule 17 requires a bolded vowel. Rule 18 wants a font size change. By Rule 20, your password is no longer a password. It is a small novel written in three fonts, containing a chess move, a chicken, a fire, a YouTube URL, and your deepest regrets.
At Rule 22, I genuinely considered quitting. The rule requires the atomic numbers of certain elements to be included. By this point, I had stopped counting how many rules are in the password game and started counting how many times I had considered throwing my laptop across the room. I was a communications major. The last time I thought about atomic numbers was in 2009, in a required science elective I took pass-fail at Ohio State. Hydrogen is 1. Helium is 2. I had to google the rest like a fraud.
Rule 25 introduces a GeoGuessr-style challenge. You must include the name of the country shown in a random Google Street View image. I got a desert road in what I thought was Arizona. It was Namibia. I have never been to Namibia. I have never met anyone from Namibia. But thanks to The Password Game, I now know what a Namibian roadside looks like, and that is a strange thing to carry around in my brain.
How Many Rules Are in The Password Game? The Final Boss (26–35)
Rule 26 asks for the current time in a specific format. Rule 27 requires a hexadecimal color that matches the background of the page. Rule 28 wants the name of a specific playing card. By this point, my password was longer than most emails I send. It contained emojis, chess moves, chemical elements, and a burning fire that kept eating my uppercase letters.
Rule 30 introduces a second chicken. I named this one Brenda. Paul and Brenda must both be fed. The caterpillar supply is not infinite. I ran out twice and had to restart sections of my password from scratch. Each restart took fifteen minutes. I was now two hours into a game I had planned to play for five minutes.
Rule 34 is the joke rule. It simply says “Let’s skip this one” and marks itself complete. I laughed for the first time in an hour. It was a desperate, broken laugh, the kind you hear in horror movies right before something terrible happens.
Rule 35 is the final rule. It does not ask for anything new. It simply says: retype your entire password from memory within two minutes. Two minutes. My password was, by my best estimate, over four hundred characters long. It contained bold tags, font size changes, emojis, URLs, chess moves, atomic numbers, and two chickens named Paul and Brenda.
I tried. I failed. I tried again. I failed again. On my fourth attempt, at 5:43 p.m., with the coffee shop emptying out and the barista mopping the floor near my table, I did it. I typed every character. I hit enter. The screen said “You Win.” I did not feel victorious. I felt like I had survived something.
Why I Think The Password Game Is Smarter Than It Looks
Most people dismiss The Password Game as a viral gimmick. It is not. It is a brutal satire of real-world password policies, and it works because every single rule is based on something actual websites demand. When people ask how many rules are in the password game, they expect a number. The real answer is that it is not about the count. It is about what those rules represent. I have seen banking sites that require three special characters but refuse to accept certain ones. I have seen government portals that force password changes every thirty days until everyone just writes them on sticky notes. Neal Agarwal, the creator, took every frustrating password requirement in existence and turned them into a game that mocks the entire system.
The game has been played over ten million times since its release in June 2023. According to Statista’s online games market data, browser-based puzzle games have seen massive engagement growth, and The Password Game is a perfect example of why simple concepts with clever execution spread faster than million-dollar marketing campaigns.
If you want another gaming deep-dive, I wrote about unlocking AI strategies in Catan Universe — another game that looks simple until you dig into the mechanics. The Password Game operates on the same principle: easy to start, impossible to master, and weirdly educational.
Can You Actually Beat All 35 Rules?
Yes, but it will take you between two and four hours on your first attempt. Maybe longer. I have seen Reddit threads where people claim they beat it in forty-five minutes, and I do not believe them. If you are Googling how many rules are in the password game because you want to know if it is worth your time, here is my honest take: it is worth exactly one afternoon of your life, and not a minute more. I think they are lying or they have eidetic memories or they are robots. The final memorization test is not a test of intelligence. It is a test of patience and whether you are willing to waste an afternoon on something meaningless.
My honest advice? Play it with friends. Sit in the same room, pass the laptop around, let everyone contribute their useless knowledge. Someone will know chess. Someone else will know the moon phases. Your aunt in Detroit probably knows the Wordle answer. Gaming is always better with proper gear, but for this one, all you need is a browser and a tolerance for suffering.
Neal Agarwal, the developer behind the game, is a Virginia Tech graduate who built his reputation on absurd, clever web experiments. You can read more about his background on Wikipedia’s page about Neal Agarwal. He has said in interviews that he was not even sure the game was beatable when he released it. He had only made it to Rule 28 during testing. That fact alone makes me feel slightly better about my own struggle.
Would I play it again? Absolutely not. Am I glad I played it once? I think so. It is the kind of experience that becomes a story you tell at parties. “Hey, did you hear about that password game with thirty-five rules? I beat it. It took three hours and I aged approximately five years.”
Pick one absurd web game this month. Spend an afternoon on it. Lose your mind a little. The internet was built for distractions like this, and The Password Game is one of the best distractions I have found in years. Now you know exactly how many rules are in the password game and what it takes to survive them. Just do not start it at 2:47 p.m. if you have a meeting at 3:30. You will not make the meeting.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many rules are in the password game total?
There are 35 rules total in The Password Game. Rule 34 is a joke rule that says “Let’s skip this one” and auto-completes itself. Rule 35 is the final challenge where you must retype your entire password from memory within two minutes.
Password game all 35 rules listed?
The rules start simple — minimum length, numbers, uppercase letters — and escalate into absurdity. Early rules cover Roman numerals and moon phases. Middle rules add chess puzzles, Wordle answers, and a chicken named Paul you must feed. Late rules require atomic numbers, GeoGuessr locations, and font formatting. No guide lists every rule with full solutions because many change dynamically based on the day or random generation.
Can you beat The Password Game?
Yes, but it takes most people two to four hours on their first try. The final challenge is memorizing your entire password, which by that point contains hundreds of characters including emojis, URLs, chess moves, and formatting tags. I beat it on my fourth attempt after roughly three hours, and I consider that a normal experience.
Is Rule 34 real in The Password Game?
Rule 34 exists but is not a real challenge. The game displays “Let’s skip this one” and automatically checks it off. It is a meta-joke from the creator, Neal Agarwal, who wanted to give players a brief moment of relief before the brutal final memorization test of Rule 35.
Password game hardest rule?
Most players agree Rule 35 is the hardest because it tests memory rather than knowledge. However, Rules 16 through 30 are brutal in their own way — managing a spreading fire emoji, keeping Paul the chicken alive with caterpillar emojis, and including accurate GeoGuessr locations all create constant password maintenance that feels like digital babysitting.
Does The Password Game cost money?
No. The Password Game is completely free to play in any web browser at neal.fun. There are no ads, no microtransactions, and no premium version. The creator funds the site through other projects and donations, which makes the experience feel refreshingly pure in an era of mobile game loot boxes. So if you were worried about cost after learning how many rules are in the password game, relax. Your wallet is safe. Your sanity is another story.
