Patient Zero - What Your Trace Grade Says About You
Reading the score and streak
What The Grade Measures
Your Patient Zero grade is a read on how you trace, not how fast. Each clean call is worth ten plus a four-point streak bonus, so the gap between careful players and fast ones opens in the later cases where the clue is subtle. Two players can hit the same score and land on different grades because one took the long road and one got lucky.
Typical Grade Bands
- The Sideliner - you name the loudest suspect; the clues are going past you.
- Suspicious Guest - you catch the easy cases and miss the subtle clues.
- Health Inspector - you read the clues and keep a short streak.
- Epidemiologist - you trace by window and cross-check, and the streak holds.
How To Read Your Numbers
Step 1 - Look at the total first; that is the headline.
Step 2 - Check the best streak; a long one with a low total is a late-game miss pattern.
Step 3 - Find which case the streak broke; that is the clue that fooled you.
Step 4 - If it broke on a time-window clue, you were reading names, not when.
Step 5 - Re-run and aim for a clean six; the streak pays the difference.
Step 6 - Track a best streak across sessions; it is the cleaner stat.
Where Most Players Misread It
Treating a wrong call as bad luck. The cases are built so the right answer is always in the clue, which means a miss is a read problem, not a guess problem. The grade moves when the reading does.