Pentagon Ring Game

Ten coloured pentagons, numbered 0 to 9, sit round a dial, and they light up one after another. Tap them back in the same order. Each level keeps the sequence and adds one more pad to the end. From level 3 the whole ring turns between levels, so you have to follow the colours round as well as remember them.

How to play

1. Watch the pads. Level 1 lights one pad, level 2 lights that pad and one more, and so on. A pad can come up more than once.
2. When the lights stop, it's your turn. Tap the pads in the same order. The middle of the dial shows how many you have tapped. There is no time limit for your turn.
3. Get the whole sequence right to clear the level. A wrong pad shows in red, the one you should have tapped gets a dashed outline, and the same sequence plays again.
4. Before level 3, and every second level after it, the ring turns. It turns one step at first, a tenth of the way round, and two or three steps later on, either way. Every pad keeps its colour and its digit, so the sequence is the same colours and digits in the same order, in new places.

You have three lives. Each wrong pad costs one, and the game ends when the last one goes. The lights get a little quicker each level.

With sound on, each pad has a soft tone of its own, and the tone goes with it wherever it moves. The game is just as playable in silence.

On a keyboard, move between the pads with Tab or the arrow keys and tap one with Space or Enter. Escape pauses, and a pause during the lights plays the sequence again from the start.

Scoring

• Clearing a level scores 10 points for each one in its sequence, so level 5 is worth 50.
• The high scores show your score and the level you reached. 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.

Following things that move

Most sequence games test where things were. Pentagon Ring turns the board, so where a pad was stops being enough: you have to hold the sequence as colours, or turn your picture of the ring with it. Players who name the colours as they light, red, blue, green, often find the turns easy, and that naming is a small memory technique of its own. The digits give you another way: read the sequence as a number, such as 4 0 7 2, and it survives any turn.

For longer sequences, a memory palace gives each item a place along a route you know, so you can walk the route to get them back in order.

Try Sequence Squares, the same game on a board that stays still, Color Span, or play our other free memory games.