Password Gauntlet Rules: All 16 Rules in Order and How to Beat Them

Password Gauntlet looks like a joke and plays like a puzzle. It starts with a password that only needs to be five characters long, and by the end you are juggling a month name, a country, a moon phase emoji, a captcha, the current time and a chemical element, all inside one string, while the rules you already passed keep watching you. Nothing in the game is random except the details it asks for. The rules always appear in the same order, and once you know that order, you can plan for it instead of reacting to it.

This guide lists all 16 rules exactly as they appear in the game, explains the ones that actually cause failures, and gives you an order of operations that keeps a good run alive to the end. One warning up front, which the game itself gives: never use a password like this anywhere real. It is a puzzle, not security advice.

The 16 Rules, in the Order They Appear

Rules unlock one at a time. Each new rule only appears after the previous ones are satisfied, and every rule you have passed stays in force until the end. Here is the full list.

1. Give it some length first: 5 characters is the floor, not the goal.
2. Sneak at least one digit in there.
3. Add a capital letter somewhere.
4. Throw in a character that is not a letter or a digit.
5. Add every digit together: the total has to come out at 25.
6. Write in a month, any month of the year.
7. Include a Roman numeral somewhere in the mix.
8. Name a country, any country, and spell it out.
9. Multiply all the Roman numerals together: the answer has to be 35.
10. Copy in tonight's moon, exactly as shown.
11. Type in this captcha, exactly as printed.
12. Add the time right now.
13. Count the whole thing: the total length has to be a prime number.
14. Look up today's date as an atomic number and add that element's symbol.
15. Pick exactly 2 emojis from the set shown, no more, no fewer.
16. No character is allowed to show up 3 times in a row.

The first four rules are ordinary password requirements. Rules 5 through 9 are arithmetic and word puzzles that you solve once and then protect. Rules 10 through 12 are live values that change with the real world, which makes them the most dangerous part of the game. Rules 13 through 16 are final constraints that force you to adjust the length and the edges of what you already built.

The Three Rules That Break Most Runs

Most failed runs do not fail on the moon or the captcha. They fail on rules 5, 9 and 13, the three rules that interact with everything else in the password.

Rule 5 says the digits in your password must add up to 25. The trap is that later rules add more digits whether you want them or not. The current time in rule 12 is digits, and the captcha in rule 11 may contain digits too. So a digit sum that is perfect at rule 5 will be wrong by rule 12. The fix is to plan for this from the start: pick your digits so that they add up to 25 together with the time digits you expect, or leave yourself an adjustable digit that you can change at the end. Keep one spare digit you can swap between values, and use it as a dial to bring the total back to 25 after the time goes in. Do the arithmetic before you type.

Rule 9 says the roman numerals in your password should multiply to 35. Since 35 factors as 5 times 7, the intended solution is the numerals V and VII, in any order, and the game reads every roman numeral token in your password when it multiplies. That last detail is the trap. The month name you added for rule 6, the country name for rule 8, and ordinary words can all contain letters that the game reads as roman numerals. A month like June contains no roman numeral letters, but a country or a word with an I, V, X, L, C, D or M inside it can quietly change the product. The safest approach is to choose a month and a country with no roman numeral letters in them, or at least to check what the game counts after you add each word. If the product is wrong, the cause is almost always a stray letter hiding inside a word you chose for another rule.

Rule 13 says the length of your password must be a prime number. Prime lengths are 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, 31 and 37, and by the time you reach rule 13 your password is usually somewhere in the twenties, so you will probably need to add or remove a few characters to land on a nearby prime. The trap is that adding characters to fix the length can break the digit sum or add an unwanted roman numeral. So treat length as a dial you adjust last, not first, and pad with small filler characters that are not digits and not roman numeral letters, such as a lowercase q or z, which change nothing except the length.

A Winning Order of Operations

The game hands you rules in order, but you do not have to solve them in the order they appear. You can, and should, build the password in layers, leaving the fragile parts for last.

Start with the stable core: the words. Pick a month and a country early, and check them for roman numeral letters before you commit. Add your uppercase letter and your special character as part of these words where possible, so one piece of text satisfies several rules at once. Then solve the digit sum with the time in mind, using digits you can adjust later.

Leave rules 10, 11 and 12 for the final stretch, and do them in one quick pass. The moon phase emoji only changes when the moon changes, so it is stable within a single run, but the current time in rule 12 changes every minute. A password that passed at 10:41 fails at 10:42. That is the single most common way to lose a run that was otherwise finished: the player builds a perfect password, admires it for a minute, and the clock moves on. The practical answer is to type the time last, check the whole password immediately, and finish the run without pausing. If the minute rolls over while you are typing, update the time first and recheck the digit sum second, because the new time digits change the sum.

The element in rule 14 is determined by the date, so it is stable for the whole day, but it interacts with the digit sum in a sneaky way. Some element symbols contain no digits, which is fine, but the symbol itself can contain a roman numeral letter, and it can also push your length off a prime number. Add it, then recheck rules 5, 9 and 13 in that order, because those are the three that other rules disturb.

Common Traps and How to Recover

The first trap is the expired rule. If a rule that used to be green turns red, do not rebuild the whole password. Look at the time rule and the moon rule first, because those are the only ones that can change on their own. Nine times out of ten, the clock moved.

The second trap is fixing one rule by breaking two others. This happens most often at rule 13, when players add characters to fix the length and accidentally change the digit sum. Undo the last change and fix the length with a character that cannot affect any other rule: a lowercase letter that is not a roman numeral letter and not a digit, such as q, z, j or w.

The third trap is the hidden roman numeral. If rule 9 fails and your V and VII are both present, the problem is a third numeral hiding in a word. Read the password slowly, letter by letter, and mark every I, V, X, L, C, D and M. The culprit is usually inside a month or country name, or inside the element symbol. Swap that word for one without roman numeral letters and the product will come right.

The fourth trap is typing too slowly at the end. Have the whole password planned before you type the time, then type it in one go and submit. If you get stuck, start a fresh run rather than patching a password that has drifted out of shape.

Related Games

Test the plan in Password Gauntlet, and if you want a break from typing, try the other puzzles on the FunWonder home page.