Packline is a daily puzzle where you draw the district lines, and the target usually asks the smaller side to win. It takes a couple of minutes, and afterwards packing and cracking stop being vocabulary words.
How does a gerrymandering game work?
You get a map of voters and a set of districts to draw. Inside each district, whichever side has more people wins it. The number of districts each side wins is the result, not the number of votes. Draw the lines one way and one side wins. Draw them another and the other side does, with the same voters standing in the same places.
How can fewer voters win more districts?
Take 25 voters split into five districts of five. Orange has 11 voters and purple has 14.
- Draw three districts with 3 orange and 2 purple each. Orange wins all three.
- Put everyone left into two districts of 1 orange and 4 purple. Purple wins both, by a lot.
Orange takes 3 of 5 districts with 44% of the voters. Purple's extra votes are piled up in two districts it was going to win anyway.
That's the whole technique, and it has two names. Packing squeezes the other side into a few districts they win by a mile. Cracking spreads the rest of them thin, so they lose everywhere else by a little. A narrow win counts the same as a landslide.
What is Packline?
Packline turns that into a daily puzzle.
- A map of orange and purple dots stands for voters. A bigger dot is more people.
- A bar at the top says how many of the 8 districts each color has to win.
- Drag block shapes from the tray onto the map. Each one becomes a district. Tap a shape to turn it first.
- The bar updates as you go. Place every shape and match the bar to win.
The hard part is the big dots. One large dot can decide a district on its own, so you plan around those before the small ones. Then you decide which districts the other side gets, and pack as many of their people into them as the shapes allow.
Your results screen shows two bars side by side: share of people and share of districts won. On a good day they don't look much alike. Read how to play Packline or play today's map.
Is it about real elections?
No. The maps are generated fresh each day, and orange and purple aren't any real party. That makes it useful in a classroom: it shows how district lines change a result in a few minutes without bringing real politics into the room. For anyone who wants to know how redistricting works in practice, the results screen links to Redistricting Action, a nonprofit.
Are there other gerrymandering games?
A few. Gerrymandle is another free daily browser puzzle, where you group hexagons into districts. There are also level-based games on mobile and PC that use real state maps. Packline's angle is the daily habit: one map, the same for everyone, a time to beat, and a leaderboard if you sign in.
Try next
- Theorem: swap tiles to satisfy three rules at once and multiply your score.
- Seams: fit tiles so every touching edge matches.
- Stacks: chain cards into six stacks, with modifiers that change what scores.
More on puzzles with medals, or browse every game by type.