How to play
- A scene appears for a few seconds: a sunset, a fruit bowl, a city at night. Study its five colors.
- The colors disappear. One part of the scene at a time, drag the Hue, Saturation and Brightness sliders to rebuild the color you saw.
- Each color scores up to 20 points for how close you got, for a total out of 100.
- At the end, you see your version of the scene next to the real one.
The daily scene is the same for everyone, so you can compare scores with friends. Practice mode gives you unlimited new scenes. Hue is our main game; the other four, Signal, Recall, Sequence and Words, each test a different kind of memory.
Why colors are so hard to remember
Your eyes can tell millions of colors apart when they’re side by side, but memory keeps far less. Once a color is gone, most people remember it as a category, “blue” or “orange”, and fill in the details with what’s typical. That’s why remembered colors drift toward the “average” sky blue or the “average” grass green, and why a slightly unusual shade is so easy to get wrong.
Colors that are very bright or very saturated also tend to be remembered as even brighter and more saturated than they were. Read more in our guide to color memory.
Tips for a higher score
Name the color precisely. Not “green” but “dusty olive” or “mint”. A specific name holds more detail than a general one.
Compare it to things you know. “Like a ripe banana” or “like denim” anchors the color to a memory you already have.
Notice brightness and dullness. Most mistakes aren’t the hue but how pale, dark or grey a color was. Ask yourself: is it vivid, or muted?
Frequently asked questions
What’s a good score?
As a rough guide, 60 is solid, 75 is very good and anything above 85 is excellent. Scenes vary, so compare your scores over a week rather than day to day.
How is my score worked out?
We measure how different your color looks from the real one using CIEDE2000, the standard formula for how different two colors look to the human eye. Very close colors score almost 20 points; clearly different ones score just a few.
Is it the same for everyone?
Yes. The daily scene and its colors are the same for every player, all over the world.
I’m color blind. Can I still play?
Yes, though some colors will be harder to tell apart. Brightness and saturation still count for a lot of the score, and you can compare your results with yourself over time.