Memory Grid Game
How many squares can you hold in a glance? A grid lights a few of its squares for a few seconds, then they go dark. Tap the same squares back. Each level lights more squares or draws a bigger grid, from 3 by 3 up to 25 by 25.
Some squares of a grid light up for a few seconds. Tap them back from memory, from a 3 by 3 grid up to 25 by 25.
How to play
- Some squares of the grid light up in blue. Look at them while the yellow bar under the grid runs down. Level 1 lights 3 squares of a 3 by 3 grid for 3 seconds.
- Press I'm ready or Enter as soon as you have them, or wait for the bar to run out. The squares go dark.
- Tap the squares that were lit. Tap a picked square again to take it back. You can pick as many squares as were lit, and there is no time limit for this part. Press Done to check them.
- The grid shows every square you found in green with a tick, every lit square you missed with a dashed blue ring, and every wrong pick in red with a cross.
Get every square right to clear the level. From level 21 the grids are 12 by 12 and bigger, and you may miss one square and still clear it, and from level 33 two. A level you don't clear costs one of your three lives, and you try it again with new squares. The game ends when the last life goes, or when you clear level 40.
The game remembers the highest level you have reached in this browser. Next time, Start at lets you begin there instead of at level 1.
On a keyboard, move around the grid with the arrow keys and pick a square with Space or Enter. Enter is also I'm ready while the squares show. Once every pick is made, the focus moves to Done, so the next Enter checks them. Escape pauses. Pausing covers the grid, so it never gives you extra time to look.
Scoring
- Every square you get right scores 10 points, on every try, so a try that misses still counts the squares it found.
- The high scores show your score and the highest level you cleared. Your five best runs are saved in this browser.
- Practice mode costs no lives and saves no scores, so you can stay on a level as long as you like.
About visual memory
Memory Grid tests visual memory: holding a picture of where things were for a short time. A few squares are easy to hold as they are. With more, most people start to see shapes, such as a corner, a line or a letter, or count the squares in each row, which packs several squares into one thing to remember.
The game grew out of a level of our photographic memory test, where the lit squares are one of many kinds of picture. Read about eidetic memory to find out why a true photographic memory is so rare, and how visualization can be trained.
Try Dice Span, a memory span game with dice, take the photographic memory test, or play our other free memory games.
