Whack-a-Mole

About this test

Whack-a-Mole began as a fairground and Japanese arcade attraction in the 1970s: a cabinet, some holes, a foam mallet. The screen version keeps what matters, which is a reaction-time test with a feature ordinary reaction tests lack — you don't know where the signal will appear.

That spatial uncertainty is the whole difficulty. A pure reaction test measures the delay between an expected signal and your input. Here you first have to locate the target, which adds a visual search step. Weak players scan the holes one by one, the worst possible strategy across nine targets; strong players fix on the centre of the grid and rely on peripheral vision, which detects motion very well even though it resolves detail poorly.

The second factor is physical: the distance your hand travels matters as much as your perception speed. Returning to the centre after each hit shortens the average trip to the next target, and the appearance window gets shorter with every mole you catch.

How it works

Thirty seconds, nine holes, one visible mole at a time. Its dwell time starts around nine tenths of a second and shrinks with every mole hit, down to a floor near a third of a second. The 0-100 score starts at five moles and caps at forty-five.