Groups is TraceBlazer's private space for competing with people you actually know, instead of strangers on the global leaderboard. There's no public group directory to browse — the only way in is a 6-character invite code the group's owner shares directly, which is exactly what makes it work well as a quick team activity: drop the code in your team chat, and anyone who joins is someone you actually invited.
Setting one up: roles built for an organizer
Whoever creates a Group becomes its owner, and can promote any member to admin — a small permission layer that maps naturally onto "whoever's running the activity" versus everyone else. Admins can help manage members without needing full owner control, which is handy if more than one person ends up organizing things (an HR lead and a team captain, for instance). Groups have a member cap, so they're sized for one team or friend circle rather than an open-ended community — a free account can have one Group at a time, which covers a single team without needing anything further.
Two ways to compete together
Inside a Group, there are two different ways to run a shared activity, and they suit different situations:
Scheduled Races
The owner or an admin schedules a race to start at a specific time — a few minutes out or later in the day — with a set duration in minutes. Everyone in the Group races the same puzzle or maze live, at the same time. This is the closest thing to a synchronized "everyone stop and play for ten minutes" team moment.
Challenges
Post a challenge instead, and it stays open for a set window — 24 hours by default — so people can jump in whenever they get a break, rather than needing everyone online at once. This fits distributed or hybrid teams better than a scheduled race does, since nobody has to drop what they're doing at a specific moment.
Both work with either game type — One-Stroke Puzzle or Maze Kingdom — so you can pick whichever one suits the group better, or alternate between them.
A leaderboard that's just your group
Results feed a leaderboard scoped entirely to that Group — not the site-wide rankings. That matters for a work team: the point is friendly competition among people who know each other, not getting compared against players who've been solving puzzles for months. Everyone starts on equal footing inside the Group regardless of where they'd rank globally.
Why it works as a team-bonding activity
A few things make Groups a low-friction option specifically for a work team, compared to organizing a dedicated team-building session: it runs in the browser, so there's nothing to install; a challenge takes a couple of minutes to solve, so it fits into a coffee break rather than needing a scheduled hour; and because it rewards focus and quick thinking rather than physical activity or specialist knowledge, it's something everyone on a team can jump into equally, regardless of role or tenure. Built-in group chat means you don't need a separate channel just to talk trash about who solved the daily challenge fastest.
For a first team activity, a Challenge is the easier starting point than a Race — it doesn't require getting everyone online at the same moment, and a 24-hour window gives people across different schedules a fair chance to take part.
Ready to set one up? Open Groups, create one, and share the invite code with your team or friends.