🧠 Echo
Was this square the same as the one N steps back? The classic working-memory drill.
LEVEL
N 0BEST 0SCORE 0ACCURACY 0
How to play Echo
- A square lights up on the grid once every couple of seconds.
- Your job is to say whether it matches the square shown N steps earlier.
- Press Match when it does, and simply wait when it does not.
- Score well over a round and N increases, which makes the task sharply harder.
Controls
| Input | Action |
|---|---|
| Space | Signal a match |
| Click / tap the Match button | Signal a match |
| 1 / 2 / 3 | Set N directly |
| P | Pause and resume |
| F | Enter or leave full screen |
| Esc | Leave full screen |
Tips & strategy
- Do not try to memorise a list. Let the last few positions sit in mind as a rolling shape and refresh it each beat.
- Silently rehearsing the positions as a short rhythm is far more reliable than naming them.
- Missing one is cheap; panicking and pressing at random is not. Accuracy is scored, not just hits.
- Two-back is where most people are comfortable. Three-back is a genuine step up and four-back is rare.
Frequently asked questions
What is the N-back task?
It is a standard working-memory test from cognitive psychology in which you compare each item in a stream against the item N places earlier, holding a constantly updating set in mind.
Does this make me smarter?
Training improves your score at this task. Whether that carries over to general reasoning is genuinely disputed among researchers, so treat it as a game first.
How is accuracy calculated?
Correct match presses and correctly ignored non-matches both count in your favour, while missed matches and false presses count against, so guessing constantly will not inflate your score.