What this test measures
Keep a phone number in your head while you hunt for a pen and you are using verbal working memory. This game runs on its spatial counterpart: a short-term store for where things happened and in what order. Psychologists call it visuospatial working memory. You lean on it when you watch someone tap a door code and try to repeat it, or when you glance at a map and then hold the next few turns in mind.
Two demands stack up on every level. You have to remember which squares lit up, and you have to remember when each one did. A player who recalls all the positions but scrambles the order still fails. That order component separates this task from plain location memory, and it is why each added step feels so much heavier than the last.
The science
The direct ancestor of this game is the Corsi block-tapping task. Philip Corsi devised it in 1972 for his doctoral research at McGill University: nine wooden blocks fixed to a board, an examiner tapping some of them in sequence, and the participant tapping the same sequence back. The longest sequence a person could reproduce, their Corsi span, became one of the most widely used measures of visuospatial working memory. In 2000, Roy Kessels and colleagues published a standardised version, because decades of use had splintered the task into dozens of slightly different lab variants.
For the percentile you see after a run, we use recent normative data. Facchin and colleagues (2024) tested 340 healthy Italian adults aged 21 to 89 and reported a forward Corsi span with a mean of 4.97, a standard deviation of 1.03, and a range of 2 to 8. Your score is placed against that distribution.
How our version differs from the lab task
Three changes separate this page from the examiner's table, and each one matters for how you read your result.
- The layout. The lab task uses nine blocks scattered irregularly across a board. We use a regular 3×3 grid. A regular grid is easier to describe to yourself, since every square has an obvious name like "top-left" or "centre", and that probably helps recall.
- The pacing. An examiner taps blocks by hand. Here each square lights for 500 milliseconds (700 milliseconds if your browser reports a reduced-motion preference), and you click your answer back at whatever speed suits you. Self-paced responding removes the pressure of a person waiting across the table.
- The step numbers. Every lit square shows its position in the sequence alongside the colour change, so the pattern stays readable if you cannot distinguish the colours. The numbers also hand you something to rehearse verbally, which wooden blocks never did.
Each change nudges the screen version toward being easier to encode than the original, and the reference sample is Italian adults spread across nearly seventy years of age. So treat the percentile as a reference point against a published dataset, not as a clinical score. It tells you roughly where you sit. It does not measure you the way a neuropsychologist would.
What a typical score looks like
In the Facchin sample, the mean forward span was 4.97, which in practice means the typical adult reliably reproduces a five-step sequence. The standard deviation was 1.03, so spans of 4 and 6 are both ordinary. The full range across all 340 participants was 2 to 8, and nobody went past eight.
So what counts as good? Level 5 puts you at the adult average. Level 6 sits a full standard deviation above it. Level 7 or 8 matches the best performances in the sample, and anything beyond 8 exceeds every tested participant, though on our friendlier grid such scores come a little cheaper than they would on Corsi's board. Bear in mind that the sample covers ages 21 to 89, so "average" here averages across a wide stretch of adult life.
How to remember longer sequences
Somewhere around level 5 or 6, raw memorisation stops working for most people and strategy takes over.
- Chunk positions into shapes. Three squares forming an L, a diagonal, or a row are one object to hold instead of three separate locations. A nine-step sequence becomes three shapes chained together.
- Trace a path. Imagine a line travelling from square to square as the pattern plays. A single continuous route replays more easily than a list of isolated points.
- Name the squares. The grid has obvious labels, and each flash carries a number. Muttering "one top-left, two centre, three bottom-right" recruits verbal memory as a backup for the spatial trace.
- Keep your eyes on the grid. Glancing at a notification hurts more than you would expect. The spatial trace fades quickly, and re-anchoring your gaze costs attention you needed for the next flash.
An honest note on practice. When your score climbs over repeated runs, much of the gain comes from sharper strategy rather than from growth in underlying capacity. Skilled memory in every domain works through structure like this, so the improvement is real. It simply means a practised level 8 and a first-try level 8 are different achievements.
Frequently asked questions
Is this the same as the Corsi test?
No. It borrows the core design, a spatial sequence that grows by one step per level, but the regular grid, the self-paced clicking, and the visible step numbers all depart from the standardised examiner-run task. Results from the two are related without being interchangeable, which is why we present the percentile as a reference rather than a formal Corsi span.
Does a low score mean something is wrong?
A single run of a browser game cannot tell you that. Scores swing with sleep, attention, distraction, and plain unfamiliarity, and many people gain a level or two after a few warm-up rounds. This test is not a screening tool for any condition, and no result here should be read that way. If changes in your everyday memory concern you, that conversation belongs with a clinician rather than a website.
Why did the pattern not play?
Almost certainly the tab was hidden. Browsers throttle timers in background tabs to save power, which would corrupt the timing of the flashes, so the game waits rather than playing a garbled sequence. Bring the tab to the foreground and keep it visible, and the pattern will run.
Why do the squares light up more slowly for me?
Each square normally stays lit for 500 milliseconds. If your system reports a reduced-motion preference, the game extends this to 700 milliseconds per square so the playback stays comfortable. Scoring is unchanged: your result is still the last level you completed.
What exactly is my score?
The last level you finished. Reproduce a six-step sequence, then click one wrong square during the seven-step one, and your score is 6. A single wrong click ends the run, so there is no partial credit for a nearly correct sequence.
Why nine squares?
Nine matches the block count on the original Corsi board, which keeps the comparison with published span data as close as a screen version can manage. A larger grid would shift the difficulty in ways the norms could not account for.