Game Leader Board: Reading a Mission Board Row by Row

A game leader board in Bomb Appétit is a table for one mission with six columns: rank, Defuser, Experts, time left, strikes and date. Each row is one player's best verified defusal of that mission. Read it left to right and you learn who defused, who helped, how much clock remained and when.

What does each column on a game leader board row mean?

Each row on a mission board describes one defusal, the best one a signed-in player has on that mission. Rank is the row's position. Defuser is the player who held the bomb. Experts lists who read the manual in the online room. Time left, strikes and date describe the run itself.

The order of the rows comes from one rule, applied the same way on every page: time left first, strikes second, the earlier run third. The reasoning behind that order is set out in how a defusal is ranked by time, strikes and date, from our explainer on how a defusal gets ranked. Here we stick to what each cell shows.

An annotated example board

The board below is an invented example for Quick snack, a mission with four minutes on the clock. Names, times and dates are made up.

Rank is the place on this board, starting at 1. Marta and Kwame both left 2:47 on the clock, but Marta took no strikes, so she is first even though Kwame's run is older. Ines and Felix match on time and strikes, so the earlier date puts Ines ahead.

Defuser is the account name of the player who held the bomb. Only Defusers own rows, and each Defuser appears once per mission. The name is a link to that run's results page.

Experts lists the people who joined the Defuser's online room as Experts, separated by commas. A grey "Solo" means no Experts were in a room for that run. It does not always mean the Defuser played alone, as Dana's row might suggest. What Solo really records is explained in what Solo and With Experts mean.

Time left is the countdown when the last regular module was solved, shown as minutes and seconds. It is the main thing the board sorts by.

Strikes is how many mistakes the run took before the bomb was safe. It only changes the order between runs that left the same time.

Date is the day the run was saved, written year, month, day. It settles ties that time and strikes cannot.

Choosing the mission and team filter on the leader board page

The leaderboard page has two drop-downs and a Show button. The Mission list picks which of the 20 boards you see. The Team list picks Everyone, Solo or With Experts, which narrows the rows to runs with or without Experts in a room. Press Show to load the board.

Missions in the list carry a section and order number in front of the title. "1.5 Quick snack" is the fifth mission of Section 1. "4.4 Double shift" is the fourth of Section 4. If you open the page with no mission chosen, it shows the first mission, First bite.

The Team filter changes which runs are compared. Everyone shows the whole board. Solo keeps only runs with no Experts in a room. With Experts keeps only runs where one or more Experts were in the room. Each filter reranks from 1, so a player who is fifth on Everyone might be second on With Experts.

Changing either drop-down changes the page address too. A board link you copy keeps its mission and filter, so you can send a friend straight to the With Experts board for Rush hour. The address also carries a page number when you move past the first page.

A short note can appear above the table. On First bite and Button up it reads "Same bomb for everyone on this mission." Those two missions deal every player the identical bomb, so the times on them compare like for like. If a mission has ever changed in a way that affects times, a second note links to the board from before the change.

Where is my row on the leader board if I'm not on page one?

If you are signed in and ranked on the mission, your row is easy to find even on a long board. A line above the table reads "You are #x of y, in the top z%". If your row is not on the page you are viewing, it is pinned under the table, highlighted and marked You.

Each page holds 50 rows. A board with more than 50 players gets Previous and Next links and a "Page x of y" counter below the table. You do not need to page through to find yourself, because the pinned row shows your rank, time and strikes wherever you are.

The line above the table follows the Team filter. Switch to Solo and the line tells you your place among solo runs only. Switch back to Everyone to see your place on the whole board. If you have no run that matches the filter, the line disappears.

The percentile in that line is your rank divided by the board size, rounded up to a whole percent. Rank 7 on a board of 90 is 7.8%, which shows as top 8%. The same figure appears on your results screen after a run and next to the mission on the missions page.

No line and no pinned row means you have no ranked run on that board. Either you are signed out, you have not defused this mission while signed in, or the run did not pass the server's checks. Our guide to signing in to get ranked walks through each step from guest to ranked player.

Opening a run from the leader board: the results page

Every Defuser name on a board is a link to that run's results page. The page shows the mission and date, a headline with the Defuser's name, three tiles for time left, strikes and manual, a line saying whether the server verified the run, and a list of every module on the bomb.

The three tiles give the core numbers. Time left matches the board. Strikes shows the count against the mission's limit, such as "1 / 3". Manual shows the rule seed the bomb used. Every mission except the last uses rule seed 1, the standard manual, and the final mission, called Bomb Appétit, uses seed 2026.

The verified line is the board's guarantee. "Verified: the server replayed this run from its action log" means the server played back every recorded action on the bomb it issued and got the same ending. A run only reaches a board after that check and a further set of private plausibility checks.

Below that, a rank line places the run on its board, such as "Ranked #3 of 41 on Quick snack, in the top 8%." If the same Defuser has since set a better run, the line says so instead and gives that better rank.

The module list is the most useful part for learning. Each module shows when it was solved, counted from the start of the run, and any strikes it caused. Comparing a fast run's list with your own shows which module ate your time. The page ends with buttons to play the same mission or to go back to its board.

Empty leader boards and missions nobody has ranked on yet

A board with no ranked runs shows a short message instead of a table: "Nobody is ranked on" followed by the mission name, then a "Be the first." link that opens that mission's bomb. With a Solo or With Experts filter, the message reads "No runs match this filter yet."

An empty board is an open door. The first ranked defusal takes rank 1 of 1, which shows as top 100%, because one player out of one is the whole board. As others arrive, the same run's percentile improves even if its rank slips. Being first also matters for ties later: an equal run saved after yours can never pass you.

Late missions are the likeliest to sit empty. Double shift puts fourteen modules and three needy modules on the bigger case with fifteen minutes on the clock. The final mission, Bomb Appétit, allows a single strike and uses a manual seed nobody has played on the other missions. A team that can finish either one has a good chance at a high place.

A board can also look empty for a different reason. A copy of the game running without a database has no boards at all, and the page says "This server has no database, so there are no leaderboards here." That only happens on a copy someone runs locally, not on the public site.

To fill a board yourself, sign in, open the mission from the missions page and defuse it. Your row appears the moment the server has checked the run.