Attention test: can you spot the difference in time?
You see two rows of five shapes. They match except in one place. Tap that place. Find as many as you can.
45 seconds. Your score is the number of differences you found.
You see two rows of five shapes that match in every place but one. Tap that place. Right or wrong, the next pair follows. Your result is the number of differences you found in 45 seconds.
How this attention test works
The game is called Spot the Difference. Every shape is a circle, a square or a triangle, either open or filled, with a small pointer that points up, down or to one side. The second row is a copy of the first except in one place, and there exactly one of those three properties is different.
Each place in a row has its own shape, and that is deliberate. If a row held five identical shapes, you could simply look for the odd one out and never compare the rows at all. With a different shape in every place, you have to check them place by place.
Tap the right place and you see a check mark, then the next pair appears. Tap the wrong one and the game points out the right place for a moment longer, so you can see what was different. Then it moves on. On a narrow screen the rows stand side by side as two columns, which keeps the shapes large enough to tap.
How the number of differences becomes a game score
After the round you see how many differences you found and a game score from 0 to 100. That score comes from a fixed curve: three differences score 20, six score 50, ten score 80 and fourteen score 95. We set the curve before anyone had played. How curves like this are built is on our scoring reference.
Tapping at random gets you little. After a mistake the right answer stays on screen for a moment, and the clock keeps running while it does. Someone who guesses loses more seconds than someone who looks.
We show typical scores once enough people have played. Until then you see your own count and its place on the curve, and nothing more.
What the score leaves out
This is a game with a score. It tells you how you played this game today, on this device, at this moment. It says nothing about your health and is not a medical test. Playing on a phone on a bus is a different game from playing on a tablet at the kitchen table, and you will see that in the number.
From one game to the full Brain Check
The free Brain Check has five games of 45 seconds: Memory Grid, Quick Tap, Pattern Sequence, Spot the Difference and Math Sprint. With the instructions in between it takes about five minutes. Afterwards you see a game score for each game and a Brain Check score, the average of the five. You don't need an account for it.
Other single games: the reaction time test, the memory test, the brain test with Pattern Sequence, and all five brain games on one page.
Frequently asked questions
- Is this game part of the Brain Check?
- Yes. Spot the Difference is the fourth of the five games in the free Brain Check, after Memory Grid, Quick Tap and Pattern Sequence. On this page you can play it on its own as often as you like.
- Does color matter in this game?
- No. The difference is always in the shape, the fill or the direction of the small pointer, and all shapes are drawn in the same color. If you find colors hard to tell apart, you play this game on equal terms.
- Is my score saved?
- No. A single round stores no score and asks for no account. We only count that a round was played, without knowing who played it.