Pi Runner Game

You run up a track of three lanes, and rows of gates come toward you, each gate showing one digit. Only one gate in a row shows the next decimal of pi. Move into its lane in time to run through it, and the digit joins the readout at the top. The track speeds up as you go, so the digits have to come without stopping to think.

Run up a three-lane track and change lanes to pass through the gate with the next digit of pi.

How to play

Pick where to start: from 3., from the 21st decimal or from the 41st, so you can practise the part of pi you are learning.
A row of three gates comes down the track. Move into the lane whose gate shows the next decimal of pi and run through it.
The readout at the top shows the decimals you have run, in groups of five, with the next one named under it.
A wrong gate costs a life. The right digit still joins the readout, in red, and the run goes on with the decimal after it. Three lives lost end the run.
Every tenth decimal is a checkpoint, and the track speeds up.

A row comes every 2.2 seconds at the start. Each checkpoint makes the track 0.15 times faster, up to 3 times the starting speed.

On a keyboard, press ← and → or A and D to move one lane, or 1, 2 and 3 to jump to the left, middle or right lane. On a phone, tap a lane or swipe left and right. Escape or Space pauses, and pausing hides the digits on the gates, so it cannot buy thinking time.

Scoring

Each gate with the right digit scores 1 point.
A wrong gate scores nothing and costs a life.

Your five best runs from each start are saved in this browser, with the decimal each one reached. In practice, the right gate is lit, a wrong gate costs no life, and the run goes on until the 1,000th decimal or until you end it from the pause screen. Practice runs are not saved.

Learning the digits

The game runs the first 1,000 decimals of pi, the same digits as our Guess Pi Digits game, which asks for the digit at a given place instead. Running the digits in order is how they are recited, and grouping them in fives is a common way to chunk them.

To learn new digits rather than drill the ones you know, turn them into pictures. Our guide on how to memorize pi shows how to start with the Major System and a memory palace. Akira Haraguchi, who has memorized over 100,000 digits of pi, is reported to use a phonetic system much like the Major System.

Try our other free memory games.