# Gamers Leaderboard: Who Gets Named on a Defusal

- Author: Bomb Appétit (https://bombappetit.com)
- Published: 2026-10-20
- Category: Missions and leaderboards
- Canonical: https://bombappetit.com/blog/gamers-leaderboard-who-gets-named

> On this gamers leaderboard the Defuser is ranked and the Experts are named beside them. What Solo and With Experts mean, and why a sofa team shows as Solo.
On the Bomb Appétit gamers leaderboard, the Defuser is the one ranked, once per mission, if signed in. Experts who joined the Defuser's online room are named beside that row but hold no rank of their own. A team sharing one sofa without a room shows as Solo, because the board only knows who was in the room.

## Who is ranked on a gamers leaderboard for a co-op bomb?

The Defuser is ranked, and nobody else. A Bomb Appétit run belongs to the player whose browser ran the bomb, because that browser records every action and sends the log to the server. Each signed-in Defuser gets one row per mission, holding their best verified defusal of it.

The reason is practical. A co-op bomb has one case and one set of hands on it. The Defuser's browser is the only one that holds the bomb, and in an online room the server sends the bomb's seed to the Defuser alone. Experts get the rule seed for the manual and a short status line, never the bomb. So the run, its timing and its log all come from one place, and the row goes to that player.

Two conditions sit on top of that. The Defuser must have been signed in with GitHub when the bomb started. A guest Defuser can defuse every mission, and the run is still saved and checked, but it is never ranked. And the run must be a verified defusal: the server replayed it and its plausibility checks passed. How a guest becomes a ranked player, step by step, is in [signing in with GitHub for a ranked run](/blog/leaderboard-games-online-signing-in-to-get-ranked#signing-in-with-github-for-a-ranked-run).

Once per mission means once per board. A player who has defused all 20 missions while signed in has 20 rows, one on each board. A player who defused Quick snack forty times still has one row on that board, for the best of the forty.

## Experts named beside the Defuser on the gamers leaderboard

Experts get their names on a run by being in the Defuser's online room, with the Expert role, when the run is saved. The server copies their room names onto the run. Those names then appear in the Experts column of the board, in the order the Experts joined the room.

The name an Expert shows is the name they used in the room. A guest types a display name when joining, up to 24 characters of letters, numbers, spaces and a few marks such as dots and hyphens. A signed-in player joins under their account name. Experts do not need to sign in to be named. A room of four guest Experts behind one signed-in Defuser produces a ranked row with four names on it.

The names are copied when the run is saved, not looked up later. The room itself is cleared away after play, so the run keeps its own list. If an Expert leaves the room before the bomb ends, they will not be on the list.

A room holds one Defuser and up to four Experts. Roles are chosen in the lobby. The player who creates a room starts as the Defuser, and anyone can change roles until the bomb is armed. After that the roles lock until the bomb ends. The full lobby flow, including how to hand over the bomb, is in [who is the Defuser in a room and whether the role can change](/blog/multiplayer-browser-games-to-play-with-friends#who-is-the-defuser-in-a-room-and-can-the-role-change).

The Experts column is a record of who helped, nothing more. It does not change the row's place, and it does not appear on the results page, which shows the Defuser's name in its headline.

## What do Solo and With Experts mean on the leaderboard filter?

Solo and With Experts are two of the three settings of the Team filter on the leaderboard page. Solo shows runs with no Experts in an online room. With Experts shows runs with at least one. Everyone shows both. The board decides by counting the Experts recorded on the run.

Under the hood, every run stores a team size: the Defuser plus the number of Experts in the room. A team size of one is Solo. Anything larger is With Experts. Nothing else goes into the decision. The game does not listen to your microphone or count people in your room, so it only knows what the online room told it.

Each filter is ranked on its own. Switch to Solo and the rows renumber from 1 with only solo runs. Your best run for the filter is chosen inside the filter, so a player can have one row under Solo and a different, faster row under With Experts. On Everyone, only the faster of the two shows.

### Four example runs and where each one is listed

The runs below are invented to show how the filter sorts real situations. All four are signed-in Defusers on the same mission.

| Example situation                                    | Defuser | Experts column | Listed under           |
| ---------------------------------------------------- | ------- | -------------- | ---------------------- |
| Sofa team: bomb on a laptop, manual printed, no room | Hana    | Solo           | Everyone, Solo         |
| Online room with two Experts on a call               | Omar    | Lin, Pete      | Everyone, With Experts |
| Laptop alone, manual open in a second tab            | Greta   | Solo           | Everyone, Solo         |
| Online room with one Expert across the table         | Yusuf   | Mae            | Everyone, With Experts |

Hana and Greta look identical on the board, though Hana had three friends reading a printed manual and Greta played by herself. Yusuf's Expert sat a meter away, but because she joined the room on her phone, the run counts as a team run.

## Why an in-person team shows as Solo on the gamers leaderboard

A team sharing one room shows as Solo when nobody opened an online room. The bomb runs on one device, the Experts read the manual on another device or on paper, and the game never learns they exist. The board only counts Experts who joined the Defuser's room as Experts.

Same-room play needs no room code. One person opens the bomb, the others open the manual at its address, and everyone talks across the table. That is the quickest way to start, and it is how many groups play. It just leaves the Experts invisible to the server.

If your sofa team wants credit on the board, open a room. The Defuser creates it on the bomb device and reads out the five-letter code. Each Expert joins on a phone or laptop and picks the Expert role. The manual still works the same way, and Experts in a room see the timer, the strike count and how many modules are solved. When the bomb is defused, every Expert in the room is named on the run, and it lists under With Experts.

Whether to bother depends on your group. For a casual evening, Solo is fine, and the run ranks exactly the same on Everyone. For a team that wants its names on the board together, or wants to compete on the With Experts filter, the room is worth the extra minute.

This also explains why Solo boards are not a pure test of playing alone. Many Solo rows were set with help in the room. Read the filter as "no Experts in a room", not "no help".

The same logic works in reverse for remote teams. A group spread across three cities that plays over a video call, with the Defuser sharing nothing but their voice, still needs the room for the board to see them. If the Experts read the manual from its address without joining the room, the run lists as Solo even though nobody was in the same building.

## The gamers leaderboard mistake: assuming Experts share the rank

The common mistake is to think an Expert who is named on a row also holds that place. They do not. Being named records that you helped. It gives you no rank, no percentile and no row of your own, on that board or anywhere else.

An Expert's dashboard shows only the boards where they defused as a signed-in player. If you read the manual for twenty perfect runs, your dashboard still says "Defuse a mission to be ranked" until you take the bomb yourself. The rank, the top percentage on the missions page and the results line all belong to the Defuser.

So a group where everyone wants a place must take turns holding the bomb. Rotate the Defuser between runs, before arming, and make sure each Defuser is signed in. A five-player group can put five rows on one mission board in one evening, each with the other four named as Experts.

The opposite mistake also happens: a signed-in Expert behind a guest Defuser. That run is not ranked at all, because the Defuser was not signed in. If one person in the group has signed in, give that person the bomb for the ranked attempts.

For the full ranking rules, from verification to percentiles, see [how a defusal gets ranked on the leaderboards](/blog/games-with-leaderboards-how-a-defusal-gets-ranked). If a mission's rules ever change, each board starts over, and our post on [why leaderboards reset with board epochs](/blog/video-game-leaderboard-resets-board-epochs) explains what happens to the old rows. Our guide to [leaderboard games online and signing in](/blog/leaderboard-games-online-signing-in-to-get-ranked) covers the account side. Then open the [leaderboard](/leaderboard) and see whose name is next to yours.