HALVES: You Cut I Choose

You cut. The raccoon chooses. An object sits on a board: an orange, a steak, a geode, a rubber duck. Draw one straight line across it. Both pieces drop onto twin scales, and then the twist: a greedy little raccoon takes the heavier piece, and you keep the lighter one. Your score is what you kept. Every bit you're off, you lose. HALVES is a precision game about fairness. It judges by weight, not by looks, and that is where it gets interesting. SHAPE. Round things are easy. A ginger root, a croissant or a rubber duck will lie to your eye. Every object appears at a random angle, so the middle never becomes automatic. DENSITY. A watermelon's rind is light. A steak's bone is heavy. A pizza's toppings slide into a heavy pile. The raccoon judges by eye, so a heavy little piece can fool him — the scales never lie. HIDDEN INTERIORS. An avocado pit, a yolk, a hollow in a loaf, a pile of coins in a piggy bank. The rules never change — a pit sits in the fat end — but every object is rolled fresh, so you read it instead of remembering it. Knock before you cut: the deeper the thud, the more weight is under your finger. You get three knocks. HIS TURN. Now the raccoon cuts and you choose. He marks his line, you knock, you take a piece. He cuts to deceive: half the time the heavier piece is the one that looks smaller. Ten rounds, one leaderboard, and a lot of lying raccoon. TWO PLAYERS. Pass the phone. One of you cuts, the other chooses, then swap. The cutter knocks in private. A perfectly fair cut can never lose — anything else is a bluff. THE KNIFE RACK. Earn ten knives, from a bread knife that saws to a katana that parts the object a beat after it passes. Every knife cuts exactly the same line; only the feel changes. THE COURSE. Forty-eight cuts in eight chapters, in the order that teaches the game: the verb, shape, density, what is hidden, thirds, exact weights, keeping things whole, and everything at once. Earn up to three stars on each. DAILY SPLIT. Five objects, the same five for everyone, one attempt each, scored out of 500. Keep a streak, watch your fourteen-day history, and share the result as a picture of all five, opened up, with the lines you cut. THE COUNTER. An endless shift. Customers line up with requests: halves, exact weights, three equal pieces, and sometimes a condition, like keeping the bone whole. Clean cuts build a scoring multiplier; one bad one and it is gone. Watch the raccoon's belly fill with everything you hand over beyond a fair half. Three complaints and the shift is over. THE PANTRY. All 35 objects as a collection, plus seasonal guests like the Halloween pumpkin. Each stays a mystery until you cut it open, then keeps its cross-section, the line your best cut fell on, and your medal. GAME CENTER. Leaderboards for today's Daily Split, your best shift, His Turn and your lifetime perfect cuts, plus twelve achievements. Entirely optional — the game plays the same signed out. No ads. No accounts. No purchases. Nothing leaves your phone.